Crime, Justice and the Media

CRIME, JUSTICE AND THE MEDIA Crime, Justice and the Media examines and analyses the relationship between the media and...

Author: Ian Marsh | Gaynor Melville

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CRIME, JUSTICE AND THE MEDIA

Crime, Justice and the Media examines and analyses the relationship between the media and crime, criminals and the criminal justice system. It considers how crime and criminals have been portrayed by the media over time, applying different theoretical perspectives on the media to the way crime, criminals and justice are reported. It focuses on a number of speciﬁc areas of crime and criminal justice in terms of media representation – these areas include moral panics over speciﬁc crimes and criminals (including youth crime, cybercrime and paedophilia), the media portrayal of victims of crime and criminals and the way the media represent criminal justice agencies. The book offers a clear, accessible and comprehensive analysis of theoretical thinking on the relationship between the media, crime and criminal justice and a detailed examination of how crime, criminals and others involved in the criminal justice process are portrayed by the media. A key strength of the book is its interactive approach – throughout the text students are encouraged to respond to the material presented and think for themselves. Ian Marsh is Principal Lecturer in Criminology at Liverpool Hope University and is a widely published textbook author. His recent publications include Theories of Crime (Routledge 2006 – with Gaynor Melville, Keith Morgan, Gareth Norris and Zoe Walkington); Criminal Justice: An Introduction to Philosophies, Theories and Practice. (Routledge 2004 – with Gaynor Melville and John Cochrane); and Sociology: Making Sense of Society (3rd ed., Pearson, 2005 – with Mike Keating). Gaynor Melville is a Lecturer in Criminology at Liverpool Hope University. Her publications include Theories of Crime (Routledge 2006 – with Ian Marsh, Keith Morgan, Gareth Norris and Zoe Walkington) and Criminal Justice: An Introduction to Philosophies, Theories and Practice (Routledge 2004 – with Ian Marsh and John Cochrane).

CRIME, JUSTICE AND THE MEDIA

Ian Marsh and Gaynor Melville

First published 2009 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”

© 2009 Ian Marsh and Gaynor Melville All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Marsh, Ian, 1952– Crime, justice and the media / Ian Marsh and Gaynor Melville. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-415-44490-3 (pbk.) – ISBN 978-0-415-44489-7 (hardback) 1. Crime in mass media. 2. Mass media and criminal justice. I. Melville, Gaynor. II. Title. P96.C74M37 2009 364.2'54–dc22 2008025470 ISBN 0-203-89478-2 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 10 0-415-44490-X pbk ISBN 10 0-415-44489-6 hbk ISBN 10 0-415-203-8978-2 ebk ISBN 13 978-0-415-44490-3 pbk ISBN 13 978-0-415-44489-7 hbk ISBN 13 978-0-203-89478-2 ebk

CONTENTS

Preface 1 Introduction – A Brief History of the Media Portrayal of Crime and Criminals

vii 1

2 Applying Theoretical Perspectives on the Media to Crime

14

3 The Media and Moral Panics – Theories and Examples

40

4 The Media Portrayal of Criminals

68

5 The Media Portrayal of Victims

101

6 The Media and the Criminal Justice System

128

7 New Media Technology and Crime – Cybercrime

154

8 The Media, Punishment and Public Opinion

181

References Index

191 197

v

PREFACE

The intention of this book is to provide students (and tutors) with an analysis of the relationship between the media and crime, criminals and the criminal justice system. It considers how crime and criminals have been portrayed by the media over time, and examines a number of speciﬁc areas of crime and criminal justice in terms of media representation.

CONTENTS Crime, Justice and the Media starts with a consideration of the media portrayal of crime and criminals over time. Chapter 2 looks at the major theoretical perspectives on the media and their effects, from the early hypodermic syringe model to the postmodern inﬂuence and culture criminology, and applies these to the representation of crime. A separate chapter (Chapter 3) focuses on moral panics and the media’s role in establishing and perpetuating such panics – it considers historic and recent examples, including the panics over hoodies and paedophiles. The next three chapters move the focus from media representations of crime to an examination of how the media portray criminals (Chapter 4), victims (Chapter 5), and criminal justice agencies (Chapter 6). In Chapter 4 we look at how the class background and environment, the age, the gender and the ethnicity of offenders inﬂuences the way they are shown and reported by the media, and how these categories can and do overlap. The ways in which the media socially construct images of victims, as deserving and undeserving for example, in discussed in Chapter 5. Chapter 6 turns to the media portrayal of the police, the courts and legal system and prisons – in both documentaries and ‘real life’ commentaries and in ﬁctional contexts. Cybercrime has become one of the most proliﬁc crimes in recent years, especially as the internet has become an integral part of social activity and businesses. Chapter 7 explores the difﬁculty of locating, reporting on and policing such crime and the problems of ﬁnding laws and regulations that achieve a balance between freedom and control. The ﬁnal chapter (Chapter 8) offers a brief discussion of how the media can play a major role in inﬂuencing public opinion toward crime and punishment, and can thereby exert a strong inﬂuence on the style and form of punishment that particular societies use.

vii

PREFACE

FEATURES Crime, Justice and the Media adopts an interactive approach which encourages students to respond to the text and think for themselves. The active engagement of students with the material is something that will distinguish this from other texts in the area and will enable it to be a real teaching resource for tutors. There are reﬂective questions breaks throughout the book which encourage students to consider perhaps a particular case study or the previous discussion and respond to questions on it. And at the end of the chapter there are suggestions for further reading. This book, along with the recently published texts Criminal Justice (2004) and Theories of Crime (2006), has been a collaborative venture and the authors would like to thank Gerhard Boomgarden, Miranda Thirkettle and the rest of the production team at Routledge for their help and support with the development of the text.

viii

CHAPTER 1

Introduction – A Brief History of the Media Portrayal of Crime and Criminals A glance at the television schedules for tonight, or the ﬁlm listings for your local cinema, or the headlines in today’s national or local newspapers, will quickly indicate both the vast and seemingly insatiable interest the general population has in crime and criminals, and the key role the media play in portraying and describing all aspects of criminal behaviour. Some of this crime will be ﬁctional, others, ‘real life’, and our appetite for reading and watching about both appears to be enormous – popular television programmes such as soap operas invariably include criminality in their story lines; television documentaries, news programmes and our newspapers highlight and discuss crime and criminal justice issues on a daily basis. And the knowledge and understanding the public have about crime and criminals is largely based on what they have seen or heard through the various media forms. More generally, it is impossible for us to know through direct experience everything about our society. In a study looking at crime news in the USA, Dorfman (2001) found that over three quarters (76%) of the public said they formed their opinions about crime from what they see or read in the news, more than three times the number of those who said they got their primary information on crime from personal experience (22%). Given the popular media and general populist interest in this area, it is not surprising that the academic interest in crime and criminal justice is growing – and that there are more and more criminology courses available for students to study, with the consequent increase in the number and range of criminology textbooks such as this one. 1

CRIME, JUSTICE AND THE MEDIA

QUESTION BREAK Look at TV listings for tonight. How many programmes are clearly focused on crime and criminals? How many other programmes are likely to include criminal incidents in them (e.g. in plays, soap operas, etc.)? Do a similar exercise with the ﬁlms at a local cinema. Look at a couple of newspapers on one particular day (ideally a ‘quality’ paper such as the The Guardian, The Independent or The Times and a popular one). How many crime stories are there and roughly what proportion of the paper do they account for? Consider how the different newspapers report those crime stories.

When we look back through history it is apparent that this massive interest in crime and criminals is not just a recent phenomena; and although the forms of media have changed over time they have always reﬂected and reported on this interest. In the rest of this chapter we will provide an overview of the media reporting and depicting of crime over the last two hundred or so years, and in doing so, will look at how speciﬁc criminal cases have been presented by the different media of the day. While the history of crime goes back way beyond two hundred years ago, this account will focus on the period from the late 1700s/early 1800s – the period of the industrial revolution in the western world and the democratic revolutions in France and the USA. This was a period that led to the development of the social sciences (see Nisbet 1970) and the ‘birth of the prison’ (Foucault 1977) and, in general terms, the development of what was seen by social theorists of the nineteenth century as the emergence of ‘modern society’. In terms of the media, it was a time when the press was expanding and becoming a major source of information – as Sharpe (1999) puts it, ‘By the 1760s, another literary form was making its contribution. By that decade it was possible, even in a provincial town, to witness that most modern of phenomena, the signiﬁcance of a crime wave being ampliﬁed by newspaper reporting. In 1765, public fear, engendered by a series of robberies in Colchester, was considerably heightened by the hyperbolic reporting of these offences in The Chelmsford Chronicle’. So our focus in this introductory history of the media reporting of crime will be on the period from the late eighteenth century, through the Victorian period and then the twentieth century. In his writings on the history of the press, Curran (1977) examines how the emerging national and local press in Britain developed its independence in the nineteenth century. He quotes Chaney’s (1972) view that ‘the British press is generally agreed to have attained its freedom around the middle of the nineteenth century’ and argues that this has been reiterated in other histories of the British press. Curran suggests that this ‘watershed in British history’ came as a consequence of a struggle against state control of the press – while concessions in 2

INTRODUCTION

terms of press reporting were gained in the eighteenth century it was only in the Victorian era that ‘the forces of progress ﬁnally triumphed’ and an independent press emerged free from the legal and ﬁnancial control which governments had previously exercised. It should be pointed out that Curran does question this view of a sort of triumphant rise of a free press in Britain – while the emerging press may have performed a ‘democratizing function for society’ it is important to bear in mind the arguments that the press also served the interest of the powerful groups or classes in society and could be seen as an instrument of social control. We will look at different theoretical perspectives on the media in Chapter 2, and here it is enough to highlight the point that there are different interpretations of the emergence of the media in Britain. In contemporary society, the media come in a massive and ever growing range of forms and formats. However, in looking at the early part of our historical period our focus will be on the press, which was very much the key media form in the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century. Broadcasting, ﬁrst radio and then television, developed its mass market in the mid twentieth century. In his account of broadcasting history, Seaton (1981) points out that broadcasting is a social rather than technical invention and that the capacity for transmitting programmes for a mass audience existed long before it was utilized. Indeed, for some time after popular broadcasting started in the 1920s, the radio was seen as ‘little more than an experimental toy’. However, once radio manufacturers became aware of the potentially huge market, applications for setting up broadcasting stations expanded. This new development needed to be controlled, and the BBC emerged. This is not the place to go into the academic debates concerning the development of mass broadcasting, but merely to note the emergence of the BBC as the starting point for this form of mass media in Britain and elsewhere. We will start our review by looking at some examples of early press reporting of particular and well-known crimes. Probably the most (in)famous of all Victorian crimes were the murders attributed to the serial killer Jack the Ripper. These crimes excited a mass interest at the time and still continue to intrigue, even though there have been many more proliﬁc and brutal serial killers since – indeed doing a Google search on ‘Jack the Ripper’ shows over two million online results. As Creaton (2003) puts it, ‘why does one Victorian murderer still exert such world-wide fascination in an age hardly short of its own violent crime?’ While a good deal of the interest in this case has been over the supposed identity of Jack the Ripper, we will refer brieﬂy to how the crimes were reported. In 1888, ﬁve (or maybe six) prostitutes were killed and mutilated in the East End of London by an unknown murderer who was never caught. The public panic, fuelled by a ‘media frenzy’, according to Creaton, spread well beyond London. After four months the attacks ended. In his study Jack the Ripper and the London Press, Curtis (2001) examined the role of newspaper reporting during the police search for the Ripper, focusing on 15 London-based papers. They were seen as playing a key role in heightening the public’s alarm by portraying the East End as inherently dangerous. The press coverage emphasized and exaggerated the stereotypical view of the East End of London as being a ‘crime and disease ridden, uncivilized “jungle” full of semi-barbarians’ – with the press adopting the name Jack the Ripper (taken from a letter sent to the Central News Agency, almost certainly by 3

CRIME, JUSTICE AND THE MEDIA

a hoaxer after the fourth murder). And they turned the murders into a media event, assuming all the murders in that area were committed by the Ripper – only ﬁve of the nine murders in the Whitechapel area between 1887 and 1888 were eventually attributed to the Ripper, the others being just part of the routine brutality of the area. A great deal of newspaper column space was devoted to these crimes, with the newspapers varying in the amount of graphic detail they printed, with the emphasis being on the violent nature of the murders rather than the sexual aspects. The papers varied in their style of coverage according to their political allegiances, the Liberal and more radical press focusing on the police’s incompetence to protect workingclass Londoners and the Tory leaning press seeing the crimes as evidence of a growing semi-criminal underclass. Curtis also highlights the speed with which the newspapers managed to get their stories to the public – for instance, the Sunday paper Lloyds Weekly gained information about the murder of Catherine Eddowes at 2.10 a.m. on 30 September, 20 minutes after her body was found; and by 4.00 a.m. was able to print a special edition so the news could reach people’s homes by breakfast that morning (impressive even by today’s high-tech standards). The almost mythical status attributed to Jack the Ripper is evidenced in contemporary reporting of murders of prostitutes where the name Ripper is typically given to the murderer – especially when the killings are unfolding and the killer has not been found. So the series of murders in Yorkshire in the late 1970s led to the hunt for the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ and the more recent killings of ﬁve women in Suffolk were accompanied by headlines displaying the same (lack of ) originality, such as ‘Suffolk Ripper’s Rampage’ and ‘Suffolk Ripper Body Count’ (The Sun, 13 December 2006).

QUESTION BREAK Find two web sources of information on Jack the Ripper and his crimes. To what extent does their description focus on – (a) the crime; (b) the criminal; and (c) the victims? Find two similar sources on the more recent cases of the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ (1970s) and the ‘Suffolk Ripper’ (2006). Compare the coverage of these cases with the earlier one in terms of the crime, the offenders and the victims.

Of course, reporting of brutal and sensational crime was commonplace well before these late nineteenth-century murders; however, the development of a national daily press allowed for the unfolding of a crime story to be developed – and the activities of a serial killer certainly ﬁtted into that category of crime reporting. Other crimes got massive press coverage, both in Britain and elsewhere. Cohen (1998) cites the brutal murder of New York prostitute Helen Jewett in 1836 as being the event that ‘inaugurated a sex-and-death sensationalism in news reporting’ – a style of reporting very typical of contemporary media accounts. Helen Jewett was an intriguing and mysterious ﬁgure who had a number of aliases that encouraged the press to try and 4

INTRODUCTION

outdo each other in trying to establish her identity. It turned out that Jewett was herself the source of the various different stories about her, fabricating versions of her life and circumstances to build up her clientele. Unlike many prostitutes of her time (and indeed of other times) Jewett had gained a good education and used this to establish working relationships with only selected, ‘suitable’ clients. However, this changed in April 1836 when one of her ‘suitors’ violently slashed her to death and set her brothel room on ﬁre. The case became a classic who-done-it and encouraged the new style of reporting referred to above. As Cohen (1998) suggested: Up until the 1830s, most standard newspapers were very low key about crime reporting, considering it to be beneath newsworthiness or else too local to put into print. But a new kind of newspaper had emerged by mid-decade, the penny press, a humorous, irreverent, and cheap daily paper that claimed crime as news. There were three or four such papers in competition with each other in New York City in 1836, and they latched onto the Jewett murder, taking different views of it as a way to pump up circulation ﬁgures. Another popular form of nineteenth-century media reporting of crime was printed transcripts of court cases. Publishers of these transcripts chose trials that had particular appeal – those exposing the more bizarre, mysterious or humorous cases. Nowadays these trial pamphlets look rather quaint, but they certainly captured the public interest in their day. The one detailing the trial of Albert Tirrell in 1846 sold in large numbers. Tirrell was a young man from a respectable family who murdered a prostitute in Boston and set her brothel on ﬁre; however, his ingenious lawyer convinced the jury that Tirrell had been sleepwalking. The Tirrell pamphlet went through a number of re-printings, selling over 80,000 copies in less than a month (Crain 2002). Trial pamphlets included those dealing with divorce cases (divorce still being a relatively rare occurrence) as well as criminal trials. Trials that involved particularly gory murders and those involving celebrities were typically popular. Another example of a trial transcript cited by Crain was The Trial of Hon. Daniel E. Sickles. Sickles shot his wife’s lover Philip Barton Key, who was the son of the author of ‘The Star Spangled Banner’, giving the case a ‘celebrity angle’ as well. In addition to their entertainment value, the trial pamphlets were also used as evidence in court and cited as precedent in some cases. So the penny press and trial pamphlets provided popular coverage of crime and criminal justice in the nineteenth century. Reporters were sent to court every day to write daily instalments, which were collected and issued as pamphlets at the end of the trial. In a renowned and widely cited study of the history of street crime in Britain, Geoffrey Pearson (1983) examined the way the popular media had described and reported crime and criminals over the last two hundred or so years. He argued that popular accounts of crime showed how important it was not to view criminality in modern society as a new or unique problem. In a journey back through the history of crime and delinquency and of the popular responses to it, Pearson shows 5

CRIME, JUSTICE AND THE MEDIA

that for generations, Britain has been plagued by the same problems and fears. As his historical account made extensive use of contemporary journalistic reporting of crime, it is worth considering Pearson’s study in a little detail. His history of street crime starts by looking at current accounts of youth crime – and as the book was published in 1983, this period was the late 1970s and early 1980s. Pearson argues that as each generation tends to look back with nostalgia and fondness to the recent past, it is sensible to start with present day society and compare it with the situation a generation previously, and to compare that generation with its predecessor and so on. While there are bound to be methodological difﬁculties in comparing different periods of time – given the changing deﬁnitions of crime and the lack of adequate records of crime in previous times – an impression of the extent and form of street crime and, particularly, of the popular concerns about it, can be gained by looking at contemporary media accounts.

QUESTION BREAK Before the summary of Pearson’s study below, think about the images of youth at different periods of history. How are youths typically portrayed in the media today? (Consider newspaper and television representations.) Going back a generation, how would you describe the youth of the 1970s? What media images can you recall of 1970s youth? Do the same for youth of the 1960s and 1950s.

As mentioned, Pearson starts his history by looking at the ‘fears’ of crime, and how they were reported, in the early 1980s – indeed the subtitle of his study is ‘a history of respectable fears’. Here we will just provide a few newspaper headlines and comments from some of the periods Pearson considered. His study, then, commences with concerns over the inner-city riots or disorders of 1980 and 1981 and the popular media interpretation of these events as demonstrating a new and previously unknown violence in Britain. As The Daily Express put it in July 1981, ‘there has been a revulsion of authority and discipline … there has been a permissive revolution … and now we all reap the whirlwind’ and ‘People are bound to ask what is happening to our country … having been one of the most law-abiding countries in the world – a byword for stability, order and decency – are we changing into somewhere else?’ In similar vein, in March 1982, The Daily Telegraph was suggesting that ‘we need to consider why the peaceful people of England are changing … over the 200 years up to 1945, Britain became so settled in internal peace.’ Indeed, Pearson points to the consistently expressed view that Britain’s history has been based on stability 6

INTRODUCTION

and decency and that the moderate ‘British way of life’ is being undermined by an upsurge in delinquency. However, 20 years or so previously, we ﬁnd remarkably similar comments and press accounts. Youth subcultures such as the Teddy Boys in the 1950s and Mods and Rockers in the early 1960s were arousing similarly apocalyptic warnings of the end of ‘civilized’ British society. The reaction to the Teddy Boys was one of outrage and panic, with the press printing sensational reports of violence at cinemas and concerts featuring rock and roll ﬁlms and music. An article in the London Evening News of 1954 suggested that ‘Teddy Boys … are all of unsound mind in the sense that they are all suffering from a form of psychosis. Apart from the birch or the rope, depending on the gravity of their crimes, what they need is rehabilitation in a psychopathic institution’. And this sort of reaction was widespread; Teddy Boys were viewed by the rest of society as ‘folk devils’, to use Stan Cohen’s phrase (see p. 40), and off-duty soldiers were banned from wearing Teddy Boy suits. Nowadays, when we look back at old photographs and ﬁlms of these youth subcultures, it is difﬁcult to imagine what all the fuss was about and groups such as the Teddy Boys are remembered with a degree of nostalgia – however, the hostile reaction and panic at the time was real and is illustrated by the media of the day. The Mods and Rockers of the early 1960s excited similar media reaction. In a now famous comment, made during a press conference scene shown in the Beatles’ movie A Hard Day’s Night, Ringo Starr responded that he was a ‘Mocker’ in response to being asked whether he was a Mod or a Rocker. This was at a time when those youth groups were beginning to be news and the media of the day played a big part in creating this (and other) divisions within British youth culture. At a time when the Hell’s Angels were gaining publicity and notoriety in the USA, the British press were looking for an equivalent. The phenomenon of scooter gangs – the Mods – versus motorbike gangs – the Rockers – was developed (if not caused) by the press reports of two days of comparatively mild violence in Clacton, Essex over the Easter Bank Holiday weekend of 1964. Headlines such as ‘Wild Ones Invade Seaside’ and ‘Day of Terror by Scooter Groups’ were followed up by TV and newspaper reporting of clashes between youth groups and the police at Margate over the May Bank Holiday – with the Daily Mirror, May 1964 front-page headline, ‘Wild Ones “Beat Up” Margate’, illustrating the tone of this reporting. The media response to and reporting of these post-war youth subcultures is discussed in more detail in relation to Stan Cohen’s work on moral panics later (see pp. 41–45). Returning to Pearson’s historical overview, his study then looks back to the 1920s and 1930s to see if Britain before the Second World War was a more stable and lawabiding society, given that the War has sometimes been seen as a kind of watershed with the post-war period viewed as morally inferior to the ‘life and culture of pre-war England’. However, when we look more closely at this period familiar allegations and concerns appear, with the media homing in on similar targets of criticism such as football hooliganism and increasing crime and disorder. As The Times put it in 1937, ‘There has been a tendency of late to paint a rather alarming picture of the depravity of the youth of the nation … Headlines scream the menace of “boy gangsters”’. It is clear that crime was rife in the inter-war years and was characterized by razor gangs, feuds between armed gangsters, vice rackets and so on. 7

CRIME, JUSTICE AND THE MEDIA

Moving back to the late 1800s and early 1900s there is little evidence of the traditional British way of life based on a ‘healthy respect for law and order’ and as ever the youth of the day were compared unfavourably with previous generations. Indeed, Pearson describes the founding of the Boy Scout movement by Baden-Powell as a response to the widely held feeling that British youth were a major problem. In ‘Scouting for Boys’, published in 1908, Baden-Powell comments that: We have at the present time in Great Britain 2 million boys of whom a quarter to a half a million are under good inﬂuence outside their school walls … The remainder are drifting towards ‘hooliganism’ or bad citizenship. It was in the late 1890s that the words ‘hooligan’ and ‘hooliganism’ were ﬁrst used to describe delinquent youth and there were regular newspaper reports of hooligan gangs smashing up coffee stalls and public houses, robbing and assaulting old ladies, foreigners and the police. As with many later youth subcultures and gangs, the hooligans had a distinct look and style of dress and were no doubt over-reacted to – although, again, at the time the media and public reaction was one of alarm and panic. Earlier in the Victorian period, in the 1860s, a major panic swept through respectable London over a new type of crime called ‘garotting’, a type of violent robbery that involved choking the victim. The press of the time reacted in familiar style, with The Times observing that it was ‘becoming unsafe for a man to traverse certain parts of London at night’. Similarly, it does not seem to be the case that it was industrialization that destroyed a stable and peaceful pre-industrial Britain – from the late seventeenth century there were complaints of increasing crime and disorder, while the streets of London were extremely dangerous, with no effective system of street lighting nor a police force. Time and again, then, a permissive present is contrasted with the not too distant past and if such accusations were accepted uncritically, we would be forced to conclude that with each generation crime and disorder have increased dramatically. Looking back over Pearson’s historical review it is difﬁcult to believe that Britain’s cities are any more perilous nowadays than those of pre-industrial Britain or when they were frequented by garrotters and hooligans. What Pearson shows is that a pre-occupation with violence and lawlessness is part of a long tradition, rather than a uniquely modern phenomenon, and that media commentaries have taken a similarly outraged and moralistic stance over many years. In a more recent analysis of press reporting of crime, Reiner et al. (2003) looked at the media reporting of crime from the end of the Second World War in 1945 to the 1990s. In particular, they analysed samples of stories from The Times and the Daily Mirror, in order to compare a ‘quality/broadsheet’ paper with a ‘popular/tabloid’ one. They considered a random 10% of all home news stories between 1945 and 1991 as the basis for their analysis. Their study was set in the context of a review of previous work on media representations of crime, whereby they highlighted certain distinctive characteristics of the media reporting of crime stories. Reiner and colleagues aimed to consider whether their content analysis supported these general ﬁndings. 8

INTRODUCTION

These key characteristics of the media reporting of crime stories are summarized below: • • • • • •

Both news (factual) and entertainment (ﬁctional) crime stories are prominent in all media; These stories overwhelmingly focus on serious violent crime, especially murder; Offenders and victims in these stories are of higher status and older than actual offenders and victims (as processed by the criminal justice system); The risks of crime are portrayed as more serious than the actual ﬁgures on victimization would indicate; The effectiveness of the police and the wider criminal justice system tends to be shown in a positive light; Stories focus on speciﬁc cases and events rather than on general trends or policy issues. (adapted from Reiner et al. 2003, pp. 15–16)

Without going into great detail on their study, Reiner and colleagues found that the reporting of violent crime was as great in The Times as in The Daily Mirror, although the reporting of sex offences was slightly lower. Over the period of their study, they found that the reporting of property crime declined markedly and was only rarely reported at the end of the period unless such crime related to celebrities or had some particularly unusual features. This is in contrast to the fact that over 90% of ofﬁcially reported crime is property crime. Fraud stories were reported more frequently in The Times than the Daily Mirror, as were drug offences. In relation to the list of general characteristics highlighted above, the majority of offenders in the crime reports were older than the ofﬁcial ﬁgures would suggest and of a higher social status. Overall, they found that ‘the pattern of crime news found in previous studies holds for most of the half-century we studied – but even more so … Crime in the news is overwhelmingly violent … Perpetrators and victims are typically older and higher in social status than their counterparts in the ofﬁcial statistics. The police are presented as honest and effective guardians of the public against crime’ (Reiner et al. 2003, p. 24).

QUESTION BREAK Look at two current newspapers from the same day (possibly use the ones suggested for the question break on page 2 – a ‘popular’ and a ‘quality’ newspaper). Compare their reporting of crime stories to the ﬁndings of Reiner et al. (2003) and consider the extent to which they support the differences between quality and popular newspapers referred to above.

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One aspect of this study, the reporting of victims of crime, did indicate a signiﬁcant change in approach over the period of the study. They referred to a case of serious child abuse reported in the Daily Mirror in 1945 – after detailing the injuries to a twoyear-old girl the majority of the story focused on the offender, who was sentenced to six months hard labour and whose behaviour was explained by the suffering he endured in the war. Reiner and colleagues point out the absence of any demonization of the offender and the concern with understanding his point of view. Recent cases of child abuse are reported in a very different manner, with much more emotional language to emphasize the offender’s evilness (see Chapter 3, pp. 60–65). In the following chapters, we will be referring to the reporting of particular crimes to illustrate wider arguments and comment on, for example, moral panics, media portrayal of criminals and victims and of criminal justice agencies. It is clear that certain crimes become massive media stories and capture the interest and mood of a particular time. Studying the manner of the reporting of these crimes is essential for an understanding of the relationship between the media and crime and here we will refer brieﬂy to such ‘signal crimes’ (Innes 2003). Recent such crimes in Britain include the killings of Rhys Jones (2007), Anthony Walker (2005), Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in Soham (2002), Damilola Taylor (2000), Sarah Payne (2000), Stephen Lawrence (1993) and James Bulger (1993). In all these cases, the victims were children/youths and the detailed and extensive media reporting led to a social reaction that seemed to go well beyond the cases themselves. They lead to, as Innes puts it, ‘widespread popular concern that it signals that something is wrong with British society and its criminal justice process, which requires some sort of corrective response’ (2003, p. 51). Innes deﬁnes signal crimes as ‘events that, in addition to affecting the immediate participants (i.e. victims, witnesses, offenders) and those known to them, impact in some way upon a wider audience’. Such crimes are responded to with decisions to do something about preventing such crimes in future through more policing, better risk-avoidance techniques, situational crime-prevention measures, and so on. The response to such crimes overlaps with the notion of moral panics (Cohen 1972 and see Chapter 3) and the way in which the media present key factors as representing a symbolically loaded ‘crime problem’ which then leads to the wider population, egged on by the media, demanding that something be done, typically through widening the ‘social control net’ (Cohen 1985). In concluding his discussion, Innes argues that, in order to understand such signal crimes, it is necessary to examine the role of journalists and broadcasters in relation to the activities of the police and criminal justice system, with the police, for instance, often actively encouraging media publicity for a case so as to assist them in their detection work. Indeed, it is often in the interests of both detectives and journalists to work together to, on the one hand, get help in ‘cracking’ the case and, on the other hand, to get a ‘newsworthy’ story. However, such collaboration will, according to Innes, amplify the signal value of a crime and ‘either intentionally or unintentionally transform it into a focal point for public concerns about crime and crime control’. These signal crimes, though, do not just relate to child or youthful victims, who are perceived as innocent and/or defenceless, and we will ﬁnish by considering the coverage of the recent murders of prostitutes in and around Ipswich, Suffolk in 2006. 10

INTRODUCTION

QUESTION BREAK The Suffolk Ripper murders – 2006 As mentioned, it is conventional and sensible to compare the coverage of a particular event or crime provided in a quality newspaper with that from a popular newspaper – in old terminology to compare a broadsheet with a tabloid (although the quality newspapers in Britain have now abandoned the broadsheet format). Below, we include extracts from The Sun and The Guardian. Read them and consider the questions at the end. Suffolk Ripper Body Count Rises The bodies of two more victims of the Suffolk Ripper were found yesterday – taking the monster’s grim tally to FIVE. The dead girls are thought to be missing Ipswich hookers Annette Nicholls, 29, and Paula Clennell, 24. Shaken cops described the shocking speed at which the ﬁend is claiming his victims as ‘unprecedented’. He has murdered the ﬁve prostitutes – all were Heroin addicts and three were mothers – in less than six weeks. By comparison, it took Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe SIX YEARS to kill the ﬁrst ﬁve of his 13 victims. And his reign of terror in the 1970s and 1980s spanned a total of 11 years … The spree has already equalled the toll of the original Ripper – Jack, who strangled prostitutes in London in 1888 … It is thought the Suffolk monster murders girls, then STORES their bodies before disposing of them at the dead of night from his car or van … Experts offered a series of theories about the Ripper’s motives and actions. Psychologist Dr Wilson, 63, said: ‘The killer seems to have embarked on a rampage – a kind of pre-Christmas spree … He seems to be racing against time to kill as many times as possible before he is caught. And he is certainly not going to stop until he is caught. He is killing at a much faster rate than Peter Sutcliffe did, possibly because he fears he could get caught at any moment and wants to pack in as much excitement as possible’. From: Troop J. and Sullivan M. The Sun 13 December 2006 Snatched, Killed and Discarded The man walking along Old Felixstowe Road, near the village of Levington, could not be sure at ﬁrst. In the failing light he stepped off the road and approached the darkened form. Only then was he sure. She was naked, lying in the wet scrubland where she had been dumped. It was 3.05 pm. Forty minutes later a police helicopter hovered over the open ground south of Ipswich as detectives sealed off the area and covered the body with tarpaulin …

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Within a few minutes the worst suspicions of police ofﬁcers in Suffolk were conﬁrmed. Any lingering hope that this was not a serial killer disappeared in the late afternoon with the discovery of the suspected fourth and ﬁfth victims of a predator on an apparent mission to murder young women who work in the red light area of the East Anglian town. What they were witnessing, Detective Chief Superintendent Stewart Gill said, was what he called a ‘crime in action’ … ‘This is an unprecedented inquiry,’ said the chief constable of Suffolk police, Alistair McWhirter. ‘When you look back to the Yorkshire Ripper, you are talking about murders carried out over months and years’. Last night Suffolk police were faced with the task of investigating ﬁve murders. Already overstretched the small force called in a senior Metropolitan police commander, Dave Johnston, an experienced homicide detective … As detectives worked through the night, they could not disguise their shock as the sudden increase in the speed of the killings, fearing that as they spoke another woman could be attacked. From: Laville S. The Guardian, 13 December 2006 Man Held Over Suffolk Murders Police today arrested a man on suspicion of murdering ﬁve women working as prostitutes in the Ipswich area. The 37-year-old man, named in a series of reports as Tom Stephens, a supermarket worker, was arrested at his home near Felixstowe, Suffolk, early this morning. Detective Chief Superintendent Stewart Gull told a news conference. ‘Detectives investigating the murder of ﬁve women in the Ipswich area have today, Monday 18 December 2006, arrested a man’, he said in a brief statement read out to reporters … Police sealed off Jubilee Close, a small street of semidetached suburban houses in Trimley, where Mr Stephens lives. Ofﬁcers later erected a protective screen around the front of the building as forensic examinations began inside. Yesterday’s Sunday Mirror carried a lengthy interview with Mr Stephens in which he admitted having used the services of the murdered women and said he was a suspect, though he strongly maintained his innocence … ‘I am a friend of all the girls’, said Mr Stephens, who told the paper he had begun seeing prostitutes 18 months ago, after his eight-year marriage ended. He added: I don’t have alibis for some of the times. ‘From the police proﬁling it does look like me – white, male between 25 and 40, knows the area, works strange hours. The bodies have got close to my house’, he told the paper, adding that police had already questioned him four times. The ﬁrst interview had taken place days after Miss Nicol was reported missing on 30 October, he said … Asked in the interview why he thought he could be arrested, Stephens said: ‘I would have complete opportunity, the girls would have trusted me so much … I know I am innocent and I am completely conﬁdent it won’t go as far as me being charged’, he added. From: The Guardian, 18 December 2006 12

INTRODUCTION

QUESTIONS How would you describe the style of reporting of these murders by each newspaper? What similarities are there? What differences?

FURTHER READING Pearson G. (1983) Hooligan: A History of Respectable Fears, London: MacMillan. This excellent history of crime and responses to it is based around contemporary media accounts of crime, and particularly newspaper reporting, at different periods of time. Reiner R., Livingstone S., and Allen J. (2003) ‘From Law and Order to Lynch Mobs: Crime News Since the Second World War’, in Mason P. (ed.), Criminal Visions, Cullompton: Willan Publishing. This article provides a comprehensive analysis of crime news reporting since 1945 based on a sample of stories from The Times and the Daily Mirror. Sharpe J. A. (1999) Crime in Early Modern England 1550–1750, 2nd edn, Harlow: Longman. A detailed analysis of crime and punishment and how it was represented in the period speciﬁed.

13

CHAPTER 2 ❚ Media effects – Hypodermic syringe model and developments from that ❚ Sociological theorizing

Applying Theoretical Perspectives on the Media to Crime

❚ Postmodern/cultural criminology

Breaking the rules and laws of society has occurred throughout history, so much so that what we know as criminal behaviour can be seen as part and parcel of social life. And throughout history, behaviour that breaks the rules has been described and discussed – in contemporary historical records, including the media of the day, that describe ‘actual’ criminal and rule breaking behaviour and in ﬁctional writings of different historical periods. Given the everyday nature of crime and criminality, it is no surprise that the contemporary media, in all its forms, is saturated with crime news and stories. As we suggested in Chapter 1 (p. 1), a glance at the news headlines in today’s press, on the television or on internet news programmes, or a review of popular ﬁlms or literature, will demonstrate the massive media coverage given to crime and criminals. In general terms, it is clear that the media, and particularly the visual media, play an ever larger part in the lives of more and more people. Reiner (2007) starts his chapter on the representation of crime in the mass media in the Oxford Handbook of Criminology by quoting Lord Winston’s comment that ‘in contemporary Britain, the average three- or four-year-old now watches a screen for around ﬁve

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hours each day and more than 50% of three-year-olds have a TV set in their bedrooms’ (p. 302). And given the amount of crime and violence on the media, it is likely that more and more people see more and more criminal and violent behaviour on the screen than ever. Although fraught with difﬁculties of deﬁnition and measurement, it has been widely commented and accepted as a fact that by the time the average American child ﬁnishes elementary school he or she will have seen 8000 murders and 100,000 acts of violence on television (this ﬁgure has been quoted in a number of sources, including the New Scientist 2007, cited on www.cybercollege.com). This media coverage raises a number of issues for the study of crime and the media. Why is crime such a popular form of entertainment and news – after all, although most people might have broken laws or rules from time to time, few plan to become full-time criminals? Is the media coverage of crime helpful or harmful? Does it increase people’s worries about crime? These questions highlight the importance of studying the relationship between the mass media and crime and in this chapter we will try to provide a general overview of the main research and theoretical positions that have focused on this relationship. In attempting such an overview in one chapter, we can only provide a broad picture and in following essentially a chronological review it is important to bear in mind that there were rarely obvious and speciﬁc times when each theoretical perspective started and ﬁnished – indeed, most of the differing theoretical approaches developed concurrently. Our review will look at this theorizing under three broad headings – media effects theory, based largely on psychological research; sociological theorizing from Marxist and pluralist perspectives; and more recent work from postmodern and cultural criminological perspectives.

MEDIA EFFECTS – HYPODERMIC SYRINGE MODEL AND DEVELOPMENTS FROM THAT The early attempts to theorize about the impact and effect of the mass media were mainly developed from a psychological perspective. This psychologically based research, from the turn of the twentieth century up until the 1930s, argued that the mass media had a direct effect on behaviour – an immediate and often dramatic effect. The thrust of this line of argument is shown in the name given to this approach – the hypodermic syringe model. The effect of the mass media was seen as comparable to that of the injection of a drug into a vein. This underlying notion that the media had a direct effect on those who received it – the audience – encouraged the development of laboratory-based experiments to try and measure this effect. Such an approach assumed that the laboratory and ‘real life’ were interchangeable. The questioning of this assumption has been central to the wider criticism of the laboratory method as a means of studying people and their behaviour. And implicit in this type of approach is a belief that the mass of the population can be manipulated and controlled by the mass media they receive. 15

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QUESTION BREAK Before considering in more detail research into media effects, consider how your opinions and behaviour might have been inﬂuenced by the media. How has the media inﬂuenced your views about different towns or cities and different areas of the world? What negative opinions have you received about different parts of Britain or different countries? Relate these media portrayals of different areas to crime – which cities or countries are shown as particularly prone to crime? And what sorts of crime? In terms of crime and criminal justice, what has inﬂuenced your views of the police? How has media portrayal of the police (in both ﬁctional and factual accounts) affected or determined your views? Can you think of any types of crime that tend to be gloriﬁed by the media? What sorts of crimes are given the most coverage? There are some obvious weaknesses in the hypodermic syringe model – in particular the implication mentioned above that it ignores the fact people are individuals who live in social networks of families, friends and colleagues and do have a degree of choice and free will. In response to this line of criticism, Katz and Lazarsfeld (1955) developed what became known as the ‘two-step ﬂow model’ which highlighted the key role of social relationships in determining how people responded to the media. They stressed that opinions are formed in a social context and that within this context certain individuals are especially inﬂuential in shaping the views of others. These individuals, opinion leaders as Katz and Lazarsfeld called them, transmit and ﬁlter media messages to others who have a less active or powerful role. However, the notions of opinion leaders and active or passive members of society are not really developed and tend to present a rather simplistic approach to inﬂuence and power. Katz and Lazarsfeld’s work is associated with the pluralist perspective on the media that we consider later (see pp. 32–36). In spite of the criticisms of the hypodermic model, this approach has been very inﬂuential in the history of theorizing about the media. Indeed, it laid the groundwork for the development of a range of research and theorizing under the broad banner of ‘media effects’ – with the academic study in this area known as ‘effects research’. Early research into the direct effects of the media, in the ﬁrst decades of the twentieth century and before the spread of television, focused on the impact and effects of the cinema. For instance, the studies ﬁnanced by the Payne Fund, set up in New York in 1928, examined the effects of ﬁlm-watching on the attitudes, emotions and behaviour of young people and, speciﬁcally, the relationship to juvenile crime. As with many later studies the ﬁndings were inconclusive with no consistent relationship found between cinema attendance and criminal behaviour. However, this 16

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early research illustrates perhaps the key debate in academic and lay circles concerning the media – the extent to which the media cause criminal or anti-social behaviour (Jewkes 2004). With the massive technological developments in the mass media in the ﬁrst half of the twentieth century, there was a widely held belief that the media had a tremendous inﬂuence on people and that could exert a powerful hold on society. Perhaps the most famous example of the powerful effects of the media, and an example which seems to support the hypodermic syringe model, was the American radio broadcast of H. G. Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds on 30 October 1938. The radio programme was simply the weekly broadcast of Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre, but on this particular night, because it was Halloween, they delivered a dramatized and update version of H. G. Wells’ classic story. Although the broadcast was ﬁctitious, many listeners believed they were listening to a real invasion from Mars and while the programme was on air a panic broke out across the country. The question break below considers this widely reported and commented on event in a little more detail.

QUESTION BREAK Invasion from Mars Below we will provide a bit more detail about the broadcast followed by an extract from the front page of The New York Times of 31 October 1938. During a CBS radio broadcast of live music from the Park Plaza in New York, there was an interruption with an important announcement that astronomers had detected blue ﬂames shooting up from the surface of Mars. The music was interrupted a bit later with more news about a meteor landing in New Jersey and the broadcast shifted to a continuous coverage of this landing. The audience was told that the meteor was not a meteor but a spaceship from which a creature (presumably a Martian) had emerged and blasted on-lookers with a deadly heat-ray. This Martian started marching across the landscape joined by others who proceeded to blast people and communication lines at random. At this point listeners began to panic, some loading blankets into cars and preparing to ﬂee the Martian invaders, others hiding in cellars hoping the poisonous gas being ﬁred by the Martians would blow over them. By the end of the night most people had learned the broadcast was ﬁctitious. However it had reached a huge audience of almost 6 million and it was estimated up to 1 million people were taken in enough to panic. In considering why many people did panic (even if the ﬁgure of 1 million might have been exaggerated) there are a couple of points to note. Many people missed the very start of the broadcast when it was announced this was a dramatization. Furthermore, the late 1930s was a time of

17

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depression and a period when tensions in Europe were rising (leading eventually to the Second World War) and many believed an attack by a foreign power was possible; indeed, around this time it was relatively common for radio programmes to be interrupted with important news announcements. Radio Listeners in Panic, Taking War Drama as Fact Many Flee Homes to Escape ‘Gas Raid from Mars’ – Phone Calls Swamp Police at Broadcast of Wells Fantasy A wave of mass hysteria seized thousands of radio listeners between 8:15 and 9:30 o’clock last night when a broadcast of a dramatization of H. G. Wells’ fantasy, ‘War of the Worlds’, led thousands to believe that interplanetary conﬂict had started with invading Martians spreading wide death and destruction in New Jersey and New York. The broadcast, which disrupted households, interrupted religious services, created trafﬁc jams and clogged up communications systems, was made by Orson Welles, who as the radio character, ‘The Shadow’, used ‘to give the creeps’ to countless child listeners. This time at least a score of adults required medical treatment for shock and hysteria. In Newark … more than twenty families rushed out of their houses with wet handkerchiefs and towels over their faces to ﬂee from what they believed was to be a gas raid. Some began to move household furniture. … The radio play, as presented, was to simulate a regular radio program with a ‘break in’ for the material of the play. The radio listeners, apparently, missed or did not listen to the introduction, which was: ‘The Columbian Broadcasting System and its afﬁliated stations present Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre on the Air in “The War of the Worlds” by H. G. Wells’. … Despite the fantastic nature of the reported ‘occurrences’, the program, coming after the recent war scare in Europe and a period in which the radio frequently had interrupted regularly scheduled programs to report developments in the Czechoslovak situation, caused fright and panic throughout the area of the broadcast. Telephone lines were tied up with calls from listeners or persons who had heard of the broadcasts. Many sought just to verify the reports. But large numbers, obviously in a state of terror, asked how they could follow the broadcast’s advice and ﬂee from the city, whether they would be safer in the ‘gas raid’ in the cellar or on the roof … So many calls came to newspapers and so many newspapers found it advisable to check on the reports despite their fantastic content that The Associated Press agency sent out the following at 8:48 p.m.: ‘Note to editors: Queries to newspapers from radio listeners throughout the United States tonight, regarding a reported meteor fall which killed a number of New Jerseyites, are the result of a studio dramatization’.

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Similarly police teletype systems carried notices to all stationhouses, and police short-wave radio stations notiﬁed police radio cars that the event was imaginary. (Adapted from The New York Times, 31 October 1938)

QUESTIONS List the reasons why this broadcast had such an impact on the American population. Suggest why the media was able to deceive the public. To what extent do you question the news coverage that you read about and see in the media? With the continuing developments in media technology through the latter half of the twentieth century, psychologists, in particular, conducted research and experiments in attempting to ﬁnd a direct link between exposure to the media and changes in behaviour and attitude. Many of these experiments considered the relationship between media exposure and violent, anti-social behaviour. One of the most famous and well documented of these experiments was Albert Bandura’s ‘bobo doll study’ (1963) which set out to examine and measure the impact of watching aggressive ﬁlm images on young children. This involved children being shown one out of three ﬁlm sequences. Each sequence showed an inﬂatable doll being violently attacked – in one ﬁlm, the person attacking the doll was rewarded, in another punished and in the third neither rewarded nor punished. After viewing one or other of the ﬁlm clips, the children were allowed to play with the inﬂatable doll. Bandura found that those children who had seen the attacker punished were less likely to copy the ﬁlm sequence whereas those who had seen one of the other two clips tended to imitate the violence they had seen. The aggressive behaviour of these two groups of children was taken as evidence that a direct relationship existed between violence on ﬁlm and aggressive behaviour in juveniles. Bandura and his research team argued that this demonstrated the clear social learning impact of television in relation to violent and aggressive behaviour. Another experiment in similar vein was conducted by Liebert and Baron (1972). It involved 136 children aged from ﬁve to nine, half of whom watched a violent television clip and half an exciting sports sequence. The children were then taken to a room where they were given a box with buttons marked ‘help’ and ‘hurt’ on it. They were told that a child in another room was playing a game that involved turning a wheel and that they could either help that child by pressing the help button or hinder them by pressing the hurt button (which made the wheel hot). In fact, the button had no effect but the children pressing them did not know that. The experiment results showed that children who had watched the violent ﬁlm clip were signiﬁcantly more likely to hurt another child than were those who had watched the sports ﬁlm. While other experiments have produced 19

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similar results, they have been criticized for being too artiﬁcial to generalize to real life contexts. There is no doubt that a considerable amount and range of violence is shown in the media – we will witness many thousands of murders in ﬁlm and on television as well as reading about them on a regular basis. In a detailed review of the research evidence on the effects of violence in the media on individuals, Eysenck and Nias (1978) claim that television violence can directly cause violence among juveniles. However, while this argument has general popular support, there is no clear evidence for such a claim from academic research into the effect that viewing violence has on behaviour. The research evidence is far from conclusive: it does not show a direct link between violence in the media and violent behaviour. Indeed, one argument is that being exposed to so much violence will lead to a blasé attitude whereby little shocks us anymore. There are, of course, other possible arguments over the potential inﬂuence of the media in relation to violent and criminal behaviour – some of which will be explored later in this book. Questions such as: • • • •

do media amplify crime? do they glamorize violent offending? can violent images increase sexual and violent arousal in some viewers? can media portrayal create ‘moral panics’?

The media effects model explored: mass society and social behaviourism Nonetheless, these ideas about the powerful and often harmful effects of the mass media on the general population have gelled with the broad theoretical assumptions about the changing nature of society, away from rural-based, pre-industrial, personal social groupings, towards a modern, mass, urban industrial society. This analysis of social change as a consequence of the development of industrial, urbanized society is an argument found in the work of many of the early, classic social theorists, including Durkheim, with his notion of ‘anomie’ characteristic of modern industrial society and Tonnies’ depiction of a change from intimate, communal social relationships to the impersonal and anonymous nature of modern society. Although there is a lack of evidence that criminal and violent behaviour is more serious and widespread in contemporary societies compared to pre-industrial ones, the disruption of previously stable, small-scale societies, where people were socialized in tight-knit community groups, and their replacement by the anonymous, impersonal, industrialized and urban societies, is assumed by many commentators to have inevitably led to a breakdown of respect for law and order. In terms of looking into the whole idea of media effects in relation to criminal and anti-social behaviour, Jewkes (2004) points to the two main sources of academic study in the area as mass society theory and behaviourism. Although the former is essentially sociologically based, and the latter derives from psychology, they both support the generally pessimistic view of modern society that underlies the work of earlier social theorists, such as Durkheim and Tonnies, referred to above. Before considering these two approaches, it is useful to remind ourselves that although it is a widely held view, and one that has become seen as ‘common-sense’, that society 20

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has become more violent as the mass media has expanded, historical study of crime and violence exposes such notions as myths. For example, Pearson’s (1983) study, looked at in Chapter 1 (pp. 5–8), described crime waves and public outrage at crime going back throughout history and well before the almost universal ownership of and access to television and the internet. Indeed, each major development and advance in media technology has been accompanied by particular concerns and led to varying degrees of moral panic (see Chapter 3) – from the early comics and ‘penny dreadfuls’, through the expansion of ﬁlm and cinema attendance in the early to mid-nineteenth century, to television, videos and the internet. This point was made by Tim Newburn at the time of the trial of the child-killers of Jamie Bulger on Merseyside in 1993 (which is also looked at later in this chapter, p. 23): At the turn of the (20th) century, there was great concern about violent images in Penny Dreadful comics. In the 1950s, panic that horror comics would lead to children copying the things they saw, led to the Children Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act 1959. Ten years ago, there was the huge panic about ﬁlms such as Drillerkiller, which also led to a new law. There’s been a recurrent moral panic about violent images which looks back to a mythical golden age of tranquil behaviour. (Newburn, quoted in The Guardian, 26 November 1993) The concerns about the impact of mass society as a result of industrialization and urbanization were reﬂected in the negative view of the ‘mass’ or ‘crowd’ that characterized social theory in the middle half of the twentieth century. The mass were seen as lacking individuality, being easily inﬂuenced and essentially apathetic, with a taste for ‘low’ culture. In such a context, where society was viewed as essentially a mass of individuals cut off from previous close knit community life, crime and antisocial behaviour were seen as bound to increase. And in relation to the media, mass society theory suggested that the media could be used as a powerful way of controlling people’s behaviour and manipulating their thoughts. In a modern mass society, where traditional forms of social control appeared to be losing their inﬂuence, the mass media were felt to be a potentially powerful force for controlling behaviour. These sorts of views were particularly prevalent in the period around the ﬁrst and second world wars – propaganda from both the British government and the German government nurtured the idea that political elites could manipulate the mass of the population through the media. This sort of elitist view of the mass of the population as being easy to inﬂuence through the media still persists of course – witnessed in the concerns over the inﬂuence of ﬁlm, TV, magazines, video games or whatever media genre is in vogue at the time. The hypodermic model or theory is also linked with the behaviourist approach in psychology. This approach, developed and popularized in the 1920s by the work of John B. Watson, focused on the relationship between people’s behaviour and their environment. Rather than focus on the mind and how it determined an individual’s behaviour, behavioural psychologists viewed behaviour, and how people learned, in terms of stimulus and response and so seemed to suggest that social action was 21

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strongly inﬂuenced by outside factors and forces – and that the mass media would be likely to be one of the most powerful of these stimuli in modern society. The messages put over via the media would have a strong effect on individuals’ emotions and feelings and cause them to respond in a determined way, even to the extent of changing their beliefs and actions. Alongside the development of a behaviourist approach in psychology, the scientiﬁc study of crime was becoming a ﬁeld in its own right – early ‘positivist’ approaches argued that a cause for criminal behaviour could be found through biological, psychological or social inﬂuences which the individual would have little control over. The most famous of the early criminologists was Cesara Lombroso, who argued that criminals were ‘born so’ and claimed his research proved that the criminal could be recognized by their biological make up and physical characteristics. And while criminology was looking for scientiﬁc explanations for crime, media theorists were also developing scientiﬁc methods and approaches. These methods were exempliﬁed in the experiments mentioned above into the relationship between media images of violence and violent behaviour (pp. 19–20) – trying to measure the extent to which an individual’s actions were determined by responses to stimuli in the social environment (including the media). The copycat syndrome One of the key issues that the early research into media effects focused on was the extent to which the media directly impacts on the population who receive it – people who are, essentially, passive recipients. In terms of the media and crime, the focus of this interest and research has been on whether and to what degree there is a direct causal link, which demonstrates that the media portrayal of violence does inﬂuence people to behave in a violent manner. There are great difﬁculties with proving the media acts as a causal factor – for instance with regard to ‘copy cat’ crimes and the problems in proving or not (in a legal context for instance) that a particular media portrayal (in a ﬁlm, game, web site, etc.) caused a particular criminal act.

QUESTION BREAK Copycat crime The following extract is adapted from the study by Eysenck and Nias Sex, Violence and the Media. Read it and consider the questions below. There are difﬁculties in dealing judicially with the ‘copycat’ syndrome, i.e. the acting out in real life of a crime seen on stage or screen. An example is Ronnie Zamorra, a 15-year-old TV addict whose parents are suing all three major US networks for $12,500,000. Ronnie, who is serving

22

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a life sentence for shooting and killing a neighbour, is claimed by his lawyer to be unable to tell real life from the TV programmes to which he is devoted … The difﬁculty is, of course, in proving that a particular ﬁlm or TV show produced a particular effect in a particular person. It is not enough to show that there is general evidence for a causal connection between TV violence and acting-out of violence in viewers. (Eysenck H. J. and Nias D. K. B., 1978, p. 36) To what extent do you think the boy’s parents were justiﬁed in suing the TV companies? What arguments might TV companies use in their defence? What other examples of copycat crimes can you ﬁnd?

Although this brief introduction has highlighted a number of problems with and criticisms of the early work on media effects, the assumptions about the media’s power to inﬂuence criminal behaviour are still prevalent. Indeed, it is often the media themselves who are aware of their power to inﬂuence people and to bring pressure on governments and other forms of authority. It is hardly likely that so many media sources would be able to ﬁnance themselves from advertising revenue if those paying to advertise did not believe in the power of the media. The case is made by Jewkes (2004) when she points out that the classifying of videos and ﬁlms in terms of their suitability for viewing and the introduction of software to help parents monitor their children’s use of the internet are further illustrations of the assumption that the media are a major inﬂuence on human behaviour. Concern about the relationship between media violence and criminal behaviour hits the headlines when serious and high proﬁle crimes suggest such a link. This was most graphically illustrated by the horriﬁc murder of two-year-old James Bulger in 1993. In November of that year, two 11-year-old boys from Merseyside, who had been captured on CCTV walking away from a shopping centre with James, were found guilty of murder. The ‘horror’ video Child’s Play 3 had been rented by the father of one of the boys shortly before the murder and there were similarities between scenes in the video and the killing of James. There was no evidence that the two killers ever saw the video; however, the judge still stated at the trial that, ‘I suspect that exposure to violent video ﬁlm may in part be an explanation’. This view was echoed in newspaper editorials at the time: The uncanny resemblance between the ﬁlm Child’s Play 3 and the murder must be of concern. A link between the ﬁlm and the crime would not prove that the former caused the latter. Yet it seems quite possible that exposure to images of brutality could turn an already disturbed child towards violence. (The Independent, 26 November 1993) 23

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Before moving away from media effects and psychologically based theorizing, a brief comment on one other example of the copy cat crime phenomenon would be worth considering. In 2004, a BBC documentary reconstructed a crime which they argued left an indelible mark on the nation – the Hungerford massacre of 1987 – and which raised the issue of copycat killings. On 19 August 1987, in Hungerford, Berkshire a 27-year-old unemployed labourer, Michael Ryan, armed with a Kalashnikov, an automatic riﬂe and a Beretta pistol, took to the streets, ﬁring at anyone in his path. He shot and killed 16 people, including his mother, and wounded 15 others before fatally shooting himself. In the days after the massacre, the British media was full of stories about Michael Ryan’s life – and about the elaborately constructed fantasy world he lived in. He was obsessed with ﬁrearms and owned magazines about survival kills and ﬁrearms, such as Soldier of Fortune. He was also said to be a fan of the ﬁlm First Blood, which some of the press claimed had sequences similar to the events that occurred in Hungerford. Indeed, there was a claim that these killings were an example of the hypodermic syringe model of media effects. However, it is doubtful Ryan had ever seen the ﬁlm First Blood, even though he did own a number of violent ﬁlms (Webster 1989).

QUESTION BREAK Many violent ﬁlms and television programmes have grabbed the headlines and been ‘blamed’ for violent and criminal behaviour. The Matrix has been related to several ‘copycat killings’, including the massacre of children at Columbine High School in 1999. Scream has been associated with violent murders in Europe and America, including a case in Belgium where the killer, a lorry driver, put on a Scream costume before killing a 15-year-old girl with two kitchen knives. (Adapted from The Observer, 9 July 2002) What other ﬁlms or programmes have been linked with ‘copycat’ violence? Suggest the arguments for and against there being a causal link between ﬁlm violence and real-life violence.

Further examples of the copycat effect are cited in Coleman’s study (2004) which details a number of mass killings, including a series of school shootings in the United States are related to this. While providing a catalogue of patterns and connections between different events, as with the examples of Hungerford and the Bulger murder given above, the evidence generally seems to be circumstantial at best. Certainly, some studies conducted under experimental conditions (such as Bandura 1963, p. 19) suggest that violence on the screen leads to aggressive attitudes and violent behaviour, but whether this is the trigger or cause of that behaviour is another matter. It is hardly surprising that young offenders are interested in ﬁlms that sensationalize crime and 24

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violence, or that sex offenders show an interest in pornography. However, this does not prove an original cause; rather it suggests an attraction to the behaviour that has got them into trouble in the ﬁrst place and that this attraction is fuelled by the media. Cultural effects theory The early examples of research and theorizing into the effects of the media has been developed in a number of different directions; and, while there might have been ﬂaws in the research undertaken in earlier studies, the basic notions behind effects theorizing are still widely held. Comments on the power of the media to inﬂuence the young, for instance, indicate a popular belief (that is reﬂected in the media) in the direct effects of the media that are similar to the ideas behind the hypodermic syringe model. Cultural effects theory assumes the media does have important effects on its audience. However, while insigniﬁcant, these effects are not as immediate or dramatic as those suggested by earlier research. Rather, it is argued that the regular broadcast of images and ideas over a period of time will affect how the audience see and understand the world. So, if the various forms of the media present particular groups of people, for instance women or ethnic minority groups, in a certain way on a regular basis, then this image will gradually ﬁlter into the public consciousness. The inﬂuence of the media is also seen as depending on the social situation of the audience and it is assumed that different groups or categories of people (old, young, ethnic minority and so on) will interpret the content of the broadcast in terms of their social situations and experiences. Of course, taking this more contextualized view does not make it easier to actually measure the effects of the media on attitudes or behaviour – and raises the problem of how media effects can be separated from the range of other factors inﬂuencing people’s attitudes and behaviour. Jewkes (2004) highlights another version of this approach based on the mass society theory, which emphasizes the globalization of culture and in particular the ‘Americanization’ of popular culture, with the implication that there has been a ‘dumbing down’ of ‘high’ culture by ‘low’ popular cultural forms (this issue of the globalization of culture will be returned to when we look at postmodernism and the media, p. 36). A critique of the media effects model(s) In the reviewing and discussing research into the effects of the mass media, it is clear that, in spite of many years of work, the attempts to ﬁnd a direct, measurable connection between people’s behaviour and their use and consumption of the media have not yielded any ﬁrm or conclusive evidence. In a critique of the media effects theorizing, Gauntlett (2007) highlights a number of major ﬂaws with this body of work and the section below is based on this critique. He starts by suggesting that two basic conclusions can be drawn from a review of effects research. First, no direct effects of the media on behaviour have been found because there are simply none to be found. Second, media effects research has adopted the wrong approach to studying 25

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the mass media. He then raises and discusses some major problems with the media effects approach. Gauntlett begins by arguing that, rather than start examining a social problem, such as violent and criminal behaviour, by focusing on those who engage in it, the media effects approach starts by looking at the media and then trying to connect the media with other social factors, like the background and lifestyle of criminals. As he puts it, ‘it comes at the problem backwards’ by focusing initially on individuals, rather than society, in relation to the mass media. In contrast, criminologists will try and explain crime through social factors such as poverty, pressure and so on, rather than start by turning to the role of the media. Gauntlett refers to a study of young offenders by Hagell and Newburn (1994), which found that young offenders watched less television than their non-offending peers and they showed no particular interest in speciﬁcally violent programmes. The effects model has have been dominated by psychologically based research, which has tended to take an individualistic approach. This can be seen in the studies into the impact of the media on children, with young users of the media viewed as inept victims of the media; the media has managed to trick them (but has not had the same inﬂuence on adults) into behaving in particular, often anti-social, ways. As regards violence and the media, the focus of research tends to be on the amount of violence available in the media rather than the context and meaning of the violence; and it cannot be assumed that violence is shown for ‘bad’ reasons. Linked with this point, media effects studies seem to take for granted that some media material is ‘anti-social’, while other material may be ‘prosocial’, and do not properly consider that such deﬁnitions involve ideological value judgements. As well as these deﬁnitional and contextual criticisms, Gauntlett also raises some important methodological issues to consider when reviewing effects research. The research that has been done in this area is characterized by artiﬁciality, in that much of the psychologically based work has taken place in laboratories or in a context where the researcher is very conspicuous, rather than in a typical environment where people, especially children, would use the media. For instance, the subjects of a particular research study may be shown specially selected clips of television or ﬁlm, which lack the meaning and context inherent in the usual way people watch television. Or, more obviously, they may be observed simulating real-life situations (as in Bandura’s ‘bob doll’ research referred to earlier, p. 19). Gauntlett makes the point that the conclusions of some ‘correlation’ studies (between the consumption of violence on media and violent behaviour) are blatantly self-evident. Studies that show violent people like to watch violent ﬁlms, for example, cannot clearly demonstrate that media-viewing has actually produced that behaviour. It is to be expected that children whose behaviour is anti-social and disruptive will show greater interest in noisy, more violent television programmes. We have mentioned the point that effects research often assumes that some people, especially children, are more prone to being inﬂuenced than other people, such as ‘sensible’ adults like ourselves. And this view can be seen by the fact that researchers, who presumably spend many hours in regular contact with corrupting and violent media material, seem unconcerned that they may be affected and would seem to 26

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implicitly assume that any media effects will only be on others rather than themselves. This seems to assume that those who are subject to media effects are somehow inferior to the rest of society! In summarizing, Gauntlett suggests that the media effects model is based on a set of questionable assumptions, including that the media, rather than individual people, are the starting point for research; that categories such as ‘violence’ and ‘anti-social behaviour’ are unequivocal and self-evident; that the connections looked at by the effects model can be proved by scientiﬁc research; and that researchers have a special ability to observe and classify social behaviour and its meanings. However, the ‘failure’ of this model does not mean that the impact of the media should be ignored; indeed, the inﬂuence of the media on our perceptions of and behaviour in the world can and should be explored through asking and considering other questions. The media effects model chimes with common-sense views and is often given credence in the popular press and from politicians; this does not mean academic study and research has to encourage and support these views.

SOCIOLOGICAL THEORIZING Critical/Marxist perspectives From the mid-twentieth century, and particularly the 1960s, a more critical atmosphere was apparent in the western world, with political and social protests disrupting the stability of post-war society. This was reﬂected in and maybe fuelled by a growing radicalism in the academic world with growing interest in and support for Marxist-based interpretations of society. And the media was one area which was subject to a more critical scrutiny. In the previous sections, we have referred to the inﬂuence of the media; Marxist approaches emphasize a difference between inﬂuence and control and highlight the way the media can and do exert control. While other perspectives or models (such as pluralist approaches, see pp. 32–36) acknowledge that the media has inﬂuence, the Marxist approach stresses the power of the media to control people in society. This approach is based on the classic ‘base-superstructure’ model in Marxist thought. For Marx, there were two essential components of a society; ﬁrst, the economic base or infrastructure that provides the material needs of life; and, second, the superstructure, basically the rest of society, including the family and education system and also the mass media. The base, or material world, comes ﬁrst and determines the non-material world, the superstructure – indeed all aspects of the superstructure depend on the economic base. So, in terms of the media, the Marxist argument would emphasize the power of the economy (through, for instance, owners and advertisers) to determine the content of the media and, thereby, to inﬂuence public agendas. This power has been enhanced by the increasing concentration of ownership of different forms of media and the deregulation of the media and, as part of these developments, the increasing globalization of the media. Marxists argue that most of the media is privately owned and that it is big business and that, naturally, those who own and 27

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control it are people who are going to be supportive of the social system as it is – and in particular the capitalist system.

QUESTION BREAK Concentration of media ownership Consider the items in the table below on media ownership and Rupert Murdoch’s media empire and then consider the questions at the end. National Newspaper Ownership

Table 1 National newspaper ownership Group name and executive control

Titles

Market share (%)

News International/Rupert Murdoch

Sun, Times, Sunday Times, News of World

34.5

Trinity Mirror/Victor Blank Daily Daily Mail and General Trust/Lord Rothermere

Mirror, Sunday Mirror, People

19

Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday

19

Northern and Shell/Richard Desmond

Daily Express, Daily Star, Sunday Express

12

Hollinger/Conrad Black

Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph

7.5

Guardian Media Group/ The Scott Trust

The Guardian, Observer

3.5

Pearson/The Pearson Board Independent Newspapers/Tony O’Reilly

Financial Times Independent, Independent on Sunday

3 1.5

Source: Table adapted from Peak S (ed.) (2003) The Guardian Media Guide (Figures are from May 2001)

It has been the tradition in Britain for newspapers to be privately owned. In the last ﬁfty or so years, the number of private owners has diminished and newspaper ownership has been concentrated into large, multinational conglomerates, with extensive holdings, across the whole media and beyond.

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For instance, Rupert Murdoch has built up a massive media empire under his corporation, News International. This empire includes, in Britain, the News of the World, The Sun, The Times and The Sunday Times, as well as the Sky Television network that merged with British Satellite Broadcasting to form BSkyB. In the US, he owns Fox Networks and The New York Post as well as a large share (34%) of the operator of the largest American satellite TV system, DirecTV. All Eyes on Murdoch Empire The scale and reach of Rupert Murdoch’s UK media empire will come under unprecedented scrutiny following the government’s decision to refer BSkyB’s acquisition of a 17.9% stake in ITV to the Competition Commission. Mr Murdoch’s newspaper assets – The Sun, the News of the World, The Times and The Sunday Times – were central to Trade Secretary Alistair Darling’s concerns about Sky’s £940m swoop last November. The Secretary of State has decided that, as a result of the merger situation, there may not be a sufﬁcient plurality of persons with control of the media enterprises serving the UK cross-media audience for national news and the UK TV audience for national news’, the DTI (Department of Trade and Industry) said in its decision published today. Mr Murdoch’s titles have a 36% share of the national newspaper market, while between them ITV and Sky – in which Mr Murdoch’s News Corporation is the largest shareholder, with a 39% stake – have more than 30% of the audiences for national TV news, according to the DTI. (From The Guardian, 24 May 2007)

QUESTIONS What effects might the sort of concentration of ownership illustrated above have on the content of newspaper and news broadcasts on TV? What factors will limit the inﬂuence that owners such as Rupert Murdoch can have on the content of newspaper and programmes?

Of course, power and control go beyond physical coercion and Marxists regard the media – along with other capitalist institutions – as having a key role in establishing ideological domination. Here, the focus is on the way in which the media transmits a conservative, conformist view and promotes established attitudes and values – the media are seen as working against change and, in doing so, working against the interests of the majority. Put simply, the media support the interests of the rich and powerful who control the media and have a vested interest in portraying capitalist society in a positive light. The media, then, promotes a ‘false consciousness’, 29

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preventing people from seeing the reality of their situation. Marx’s ideas on the media were developed by Gramsci, with his discussion of hegemony, a concept which has been very inﬂuential in theorizing on the relationship between the media and crime (Jewkes 2004). Gramsci’s writings and arguments from prison (1971) had an important inﬂuence on media research, with his argument that the media had a key role to play in ensuring the compliance of the mass of society, so that the ruling groups dominated not merely by force but, more importantly, by gaining the consent of the majority. Hegemony refers to the process by which powerful groups maintain and extend their power through winning the consent of the masses, rather than relying on coercion. It combines the notions of force and consent and suggests that ideologies become most powerful when accepted by the mass as common sense. Gramsci understands that ideological domination is never absolute and ﬁxed, there is always a struggle to inﬂuence the thinking of the wider public; and in this struggle for hegemony the media has a crucial role. Although mainly known for his innovative work on language and not a mainstream Marxist theorist, Noam Chomsky adopted a broadly Marxist approach to considering the role of the media (1989). He developed a ‘propaganda’ model that saw the media as an instrument of class domination, due to the concentration of ownership in media and other conglomerates, which was reﬂected in the content of the commercial broadcasting, press and other media outlets that they controlled. Chomsky believed the media controlled and limited debate in a way that protected the dominant conglomerate and state interests; reﬂecting the more liberal, pluralist view that the media enable the public to have some inﬂuence and control over the political process through providing a variety of ideas, opinions and information. As mentioned above, Marxist, critical views came to the fore in the 1960s and 1970s and informed a wide range of research and theorizing in the social sciences. Here we will look at two examples of Marxist inﬂuenced theorizing – Miliband’s study The State in Capitalist Society (1973) and the work of the Glasgow University Media Group. Miliband’s work is an example that applies the Marxist argument to the media. He argued that the state (including the government, the police and the judiciary) exercise power in the interests of the ruling classes and that it is able to do this through controlling ideology – the most effective means of social control. This is the mechanism that persuades people to accept the system as it is, with all the inequities in it. How, for example, are people persuaded to accept as fair a system that pays one person massively more than another for more or less the same effort? Miliband argues that it is through the power of the dominant groups to control the knowledge and ideas available to the wider population – and that the media is one of the key institutions enabling them to exert this control. Although there is a wide range of media sources (and far more than when Miliband’s study was published over three decades ago) providing for different audiences and viewpoints; the notion that there is real diversity is seen by Miliband as a misleading and superﬁcial view. The mass media may provide a degree of impartiality through presenting different opinions and views, but this impartiality is only within the boundaries of what is deemed as ‘acceptable’. Alternative ideas and opinions which fall outside of the general consensus are given 30

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little support or credibility. Miliband argues that the content of the media reﬂects the views of the dominant groups in society – and, speciﬁcally, the white, middle class viewpoint – and it is not just news-based content, but also the content of entertainment programmes that are seen as supporting the present social system through portraying it in a basically favourable light. Indeed, popular soap operas and dramas provide enjoyment and even a sense of well being for millions and help to divert attention from and distort our view of the social system through giving the impression that nothing is drastically wrong with the world we live in. Using language reﬂecting the Marxist thrust of his argument, Miliband describes the media as an ‘agency of conservative indoctrination’ that conditions people against dissent. The media are seen as the new ‘opium of the people’, paraphrasing Marx’s famous comment that ‘religion is the opium of the people’. The media act like a drug, keeping the working population quiet and supportive of a system that, in reality, works against their interest. It cannot foster complete compliance but does, according to Miliband, ‘foster a climate of conformity’ by presenting any views that fall outside of a general consensus as ‘curious heresies, or even more effectively by treating them as irrelevant eccentricities which serious and reasonable people may dismiss as of no consequence’ (1973, p. 213). So the media are seen as one part of a system of ideological domination, which supports the position of the powerful; it helps to socialize the mass of the population to a life of subordination and to accept things as they are. Although not presenting a classic Marxist approach, the work of the Glasgow Media University Group over the last thirty or so years has provided an important critical examination of media, and in particular news, reportage. Their work has taken issue with the common-sense view that news reporting merely reﬂects what’s going on in society and that news reporters are professional journalists who know their jobs and work under pressure in a fast-moving world. However, these journalists will have their own beliefs and values and their own prejudices and if these are expressed in and through their news reporting then there may well be cause for concern. In a series of studies that were based on detailed content analyses of television news, including Bad News (1976), More Bad News (1980), Really Bad News (1982), War and Peace News (1985) and Getting the Message: News, Truth and Power (1993), the Glasgow Group criticized broadcasters’ claims that they presented the news impartially. The major ﬁnding of their studies was that television news reproduces the dominant ideology and does not present the diversity of opinions available in any given situation. They considered the issue of agenda-setting in the news and the assumption held by journalists that the news is an objective, ‘real’ phenomenon and that certain items have ‘news value’. However, journalists have to organize the news they present from a whole mass of information and opinion – they have to select, interpret and edit and, in doing so, the Glasgow Group argue, certain viewpoints are emphasized to the exclusion of others. In one of the early studies, they quote from a BBC pamphlet on the news that makes the point, ‘the news value of a story is something immediately recognizable, intuitively sensed by a journalist … (who) learns to spot the signiﬁcant news point … which distinguishes a newsworthy story’ (1980, p. 113). This highlights the questions as to just what is ‘the signiﬁcant 31

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news point’ and seems to suggest that what is presented as news is based on the inherited ‘wisdom’ of journalistic assumptions about the world and the audience they are reporting to. As the Glasgow Group put it: The assertion of impartiality as a regular professional achievement is little more than the unsupported claim to a unique understanding of events. This serves only to obfuscate what is in fact the reproduction of the dominant assumptions about society – the assumptions of the powerful about what is important, necessary and possible within in. (1980, p. 115) The early research of the Glasgow University Media group involved studying the media portrayal of industrial disputes – a portrayal, they argued, which demonstrated that what the media presents as news is a reﬂection of the interests and assumptions of the powerful. They found that in reporting strikes, for example, management were presented in a far better light than striking workers. For instance, management were usually shown in an ofﬁce context and were allowed to make their points quietly, while trade unionists often had to shout over the noise around them or were interrupted by reporters. Furthermore, in reporting strikes, little time was devoted to detailing the background to the particular dispute and the emphasis was invariably on the effects on the wider public. In summary, the Glasgow group’s work rejects the pluralist perspective (considered below) that the media is essentially neutral and impartial. Rather the news is seen as leading rather than reﬂecting opinion, it ‘sets the agenda’ and structures people’s attitudes. Consensus perspectives – pluralism and functionalism The main focus in this brief overview is on pluralism; however, this approach does overlap with the functionalist perspective, one of the major theoretical positions in Sociology. Based on the work of the social theorist, Emile Durkheim, functionalist social theory emphasizes consensus, rather than conﬂict, and how social order is maintained within society. Functionalists stress the importance of ensuring that people conform to generally held social values and norms of behaviour. They consider the major ways in which order is created and then maintained; and in doing so highlight the ways in which people are socialized into conformity. Socialization can and does occur through the family and kinship systems but also from cultural subsystems, including the mass media. So the media are examined in terms of how they function to maintain the social order as it is. In this context, the roles of the media include spreading knowledge and information across society as a whole and performing a social control function by presenting to the population a set of values that reﬂect the requirements of the society. In other words, a primary function of the media is seen as promoting an ideology that broadly supports the wider society, and the institutions within it. In terms of ownership and control of the media, the functionalist perspective focuses on the need for there to be a range of views on offer through different 32

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media forms. The stability of a society is promoted when there is a reasonable range of different media for people to choose from; so that very popular publications and programmes sit alongside more specialist media offerings. The media, then, are seen as largely driven by the market and consumer demand. These ideas about the role of the market are similar to the pluralist perspective considered next. First, however, it is worth considering a couple of problems with this consensus based, functionalist position. What are deemed to be generally held social values may be the values of one particular class, rather than those of ‘society as a whole’. It is pretty clear that the media do not, and maybe cannot, reﬂect equally all points of view – some views are inevitably down-graded, perhaps because of the political perspective of newspaper owners, broadcasters and others in control of different media forms. The pluralist perspective has a similar theoretical position to functionalism but focuses more on the role of the state. Pluralists believe that societies are made up of a range of different but complementary sections, each of which has access to resources and inﬂuence; and these different sections and groups are overseen by an essentially neutral state which works to ensure the general public interest is served. Applying this to the media, the conﬂict-based theoretical approaches looked at earlier see the media as having a good deal of power to inﬂuence their audiences; and tend to suggest that the less powerful groups and sections of society are more vulnerable to media inﬂuence. In contrast, pluralist theories adopt a much more positive approach to explaining the role of the media; arguing that they provide a massive and increasingly wide range of material to a diverse audience. Different aspects of the media cater for the different sections within society; so that overall the media come to reﬂect society. Just as there is diversity of tastes and opinions in a society so there is diversity within the media. The title pluralist is one used to categorize and encompass other approaches to theorizing about the media. These theories are sometimes called ‘market’ or ‘liberal’ theories of the media. The basic thrust of this general range of research and theorizing on the media is that the media reﬂects what the mass of the public want – the mass media basically respond to the market demand. Even if the media may reﬂect certain viewpoints more than others, and even be biased in some ways, they still reinforce the most popular and generally held attitudes and beliefs, and the views they give most coverage to are those that most people support and sympathize with. The less mainstream opinions and attitudes are still catered for, but by more speciﬁc media outlets – such as minority magazines and specialist radio and television channels and programmes. Those who own and control the media will argue that they are serving the market; their particular media forms have to remain viable and so have to provide what the public wants. Pluralist theories of the media are based on the wider pluralist theory of power in society, which argues that power is shared by a range of interest groups and that no one group or elite dominates the rest of society. Ideally, pluralists see the involvement of groups representing as wide a range of interest as possible in a society as being essential to decision-making in that society (and the role of a government is to arbitrate between the different groups that seek to inﬂuence decision-making processes). Of course, it is accepted that certain groups have greater access to decision 33

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and policy makers and that some interests are under-represented (for instance, the interests of less powerful groups, such as unemployed or migrant workers, perhaps). However, governments have to consult and take into account the views of a range of interest groups so as to minimize conﬂict and because even less-powerful and poorlyrepresented groups can still have a signiﬁcant impact in terms of voting at elections. The nineteenth century French political thinker and historian, Alexis de Tocqueville, is generally regarded as the founder of pluralism. In his seminal work, Democracy in America (1835), he argued that in a democracy it was normal and necessary that individuals would have a large number of speciﬁc interests; and that a democracy would not work if any one division or group in society came to dominate all of the others. From the pluralist perspective, the mass media is seen as reﬂecting this variety of interests; and as a consequence of this choice, pluralists argue that the media have little direct media inﬂuence on people’s attitudes and viewpoints and that what inﬂuence they do have tends to reinforce already-held attitudes and views. So, unlike the conﬂict, Marxist-based approaches, the inﬂuence of the media is not seen as a particular cause for concern. Indeed, advocates of this theoretical approach see the increased diversity in the media as part of a new era of freedom. More and more media outlets, including television and radio channels, magazines and computerbased media, provide a choice that was almost unimaginable a few decades ago. Media proliferation has ensured that an ever wider range of views and ideas are accessible to far greater numbers of people. Texts and writing on the mass media have often been from a basically pluralist position, particularly those that have been written by media professionals. Katz and Lazarsfeld’s early theoretical work (1955), that developed and critiques the hypodermic syringe model, offered a fairly positive and pluralist take on the role and effect of the media. In one study of news reporting, a BBC radio broadcaster, Nicholas Jones, argued that the news presentation on radio was neutral, fair and balanced, reporting a range of relevant views and not favouring one opinion over others (cited in Haralambos and Holborn 2004). The pluralist perspective on to the role and effect of the media developed as a criticism of the more negative approaches looked at earlier in this chapter. Some of the early pluralist writers and theorists, such as Robert Dahl and Herbert Gans, celebrated the spread of democracy and the variety of popular culture within such societies. The media were seen as playing an important role in the democratic process by providing access to information, widening debate and giving all groups and sections in society an opportunity to promote and share their views and tastes with others. This is essentially a liberal, market-driven approach, whereby the obvious way of providing genuine freedom of choice for a widely diverse public is seen as being through a deregulated mass media – where the demand for different media offerings is met by a range of media outlets. However, it is idealistic and unrealistic to suggest that all minority interests are now served by this explosion in the number and the range of the mass media. As Jewkes (2004) argues, there are still many vested interests in media ownership and control and, ‘for all the proliferation of new channels, media industries are still owned and controlled by a small handful of white, wealthy, middle class men (or corporations started by such men)’ (p. 22). 34

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As mentioned earlier, the thrust of the pluralist approach is indicated by another title it is sometimes considered under – ‘market theory’. And market-based approaches, for all their supposed democratic intent, lead to an increasing emphasis on commercialization, which results in media institutions sticking to what they know sells – which tends to be entertainment aimed at a ‘lowest common denominator’ audience. This has led to the trend commonly called ‘dumbing down’, with audience ratings the be all and end all; and this occurs at the expense of in-depth political commentary and analysis. This can be seen in media coverage of crime, whereby programmes and news coverage tend to focus on unusual and spectacular crimes – such as cases involving serial killers and child abusers. While computer-based media, and in particular the internet, would seem to offer a wide variety of ideas and views, they are not equally available to all sections and groups in society.

QUESTION BREAK ∗

TV schedules from a Saturday night

Saturday 17 May 2008 BBC 1 6.00 Out-Take 6.30 The Kids are All Right 7.00 Doctor Who 7.45 I’d Do Anything 8.45 The National Lottery 9.35 Casualty ITV 1 6.00 Britain Does the Funniest Things 7.00 All Star Mr & Mrs 8.00 Britain’s Got Talent 9.00 Pushing Daisies 10.00 2 Fast 2 Furious Suggest any evidence that might be used to support the view that there has been a ‘dumbing down’ of the media in Britain. What points could be made to counter that argument? ∗ (Possibly)

Popular Press Headlines from particular day – Sun, Star.

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So, while the ideas and philosophy behind the pluralist approaches are ﬁne in theory – the notion of a wide and free choice for everyone – the reality suggests a less-positive and optimistic picture. As Jewkes (2004) puts it, ‘pluralism, then, might best be viewed as an expression of how things could be, rather than how things are’. (p. 24)

POSTMODERN/CULTURAL CRIMINOLOGY Societies have always been subject to change and it is probably commonplace for people to view the changes they are currently facing as being particularly momentous and rapid in comparison to earlier periods of time. Certainly, there have been rapid transformations in the social, political, cultural and economic arenas of life in the later years of the twentieth century and into the current century. Indeed, the extent and rapidity of these changes has led theorists to suggest that modern Western societies had reached a condition of ‘postmodernity’. This new theoretical paradigm has been seen as a response to the major transformations in global cultural, political and economic life; transformations that have replaced the social structures associated with ‘modern’ societies, such as class divisions, capitalism and the nation state. The role and inﬂuence of the mass media in postmodern society has been an important aspect of the writing and theorizing from this theoretical position. It is generally accepted that we live in a media-dominated society, so much so that the media does not merely reﬂect social reality but rather that media images are realities in themselves. Postmodern society is also characterized by the importance given to image and style; and the media play a key role in promoting image and style, through adverts as well as ﬁlms and television programmes.

QUESTION BREAK Considering adverts and also other aspects of media coverage such as ﬁlms or television programmes, what images are used by the media to promote: a. b. c. d. e.

men’s clothing women’s clothing alcoholic drinks cars holidays

Give examples of each of the above categories.

Strinati (1992), in his discussion of postmodernism and the media, describes how the media encourage us to cross and criss-cross time and space, with ﬁlm 36

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and television, in particular, providing collages of images from different times and places. Increasingly, then, the mass media come to dominate our deﬁnition and sense of reality, with images from television, computer games, the internet, DVDs and personal music players depicting our everyday world. This is seen by many as a worrying development with, according to Strinati, media images encouraging, ‘superﬁciality rather than substance, cynicism rather than belief, the thirst for constant change rather than the security of stable traditions, the desires of the moment rather than the truths of history’ (1992, p. 7). The mass media has contributed to producing a cultural context centred on immediate consumption and sensationalized impact, with a consequent lack of depth and context – the stress and pressure is on entertainment and audience gratiﬁcation. The focus on entertainment rather than information can be seen as undermining meaningful debate. Entertainment and sensationalization, and the media emphasis on them, can be used by different political and other groups for both positive and negative ends. Jewkes (2004) uses the example of terrorists who have taken and utilized the sensational impact the media can have for their own ends and with devastating effect. The most obvious and appalling example of this ‘postmodern media performance’, as Jewkes puts it, was the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. The attack was watched on television by millions in America and elsewhere as it unfolded – and this event had such a massively overwhelming impact because of the immediacy and dramatic impact of the images on television and ﬁlm. Terrorist attacks bring home to everyone the idea that anyone and everyone is a potential victim of crime; presenting us with a picture of random criminality and violence that governments are apparently unable to prevent or do anything about. In considering the different representations of crime, both factual and ﬁctional, that is presented by the media, it is clear that it is those crimes that are very rare, or that have some unusual features, which are given by far the most media time and coverage. Serial killings and child abductions, for instance, although very untypical crimes, are given widespread coverage. This, Jewkes (2004) suggests, increases the anxiety of the public and deﬂects the focus from more commonplace crimes, including corporate crime and abuse within families. Postmodernism has been presented as a major, decisive break with previous structures and theoretical stances. However, whether the postmodern society is fundamentally different and unique, or whether there has just been a more rapid development of modernity in recent years, is open to debate. Nonetheless, there have been a range of new freedoms and associated new uncertainties that are seen as characteristic of contemporary society. The features typically seen as characteristic of postmodernism include a rejection of all-encompassing theoretical perspectives (meta-narratives) and of the notion that there are absolute truths and, in their place, an extolling of variety and differences, particularly within the media, but also in other cultural areas such as architecture, art and literature. Modernity (seen by postmodern theorists as the predecessor of postmodern society) has been seen as associated with the development of industrial society and the classic theoretical explanations that proliferated at the turn of the twentieth century – it is seen as characterized by a certain degree of moral certainty and a belief that theoretical 37

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thinking would be able to explain the problems facing humanity. In contrast, postmodernity emphasizes moral ambiguity and the belief that there are a range of truths and discourses that can all have value and be acceptable at different times and for different people. The emphasis is on diversity – of theoretical explanations as well as of cultural forms, notably the media, and this has had an impact on criminological theorizing. Indeed, a particular inﬂuence of postmodernism that can be related to theorizing about crime concerns the spread of the media, including the scope this offers for new forms of criminal behaviour and the role it has played in the development of ‘cultural criminology’. Particularly associated with the theorizing of American criminologist Jeff Ferrell, cultural criminology emphasizes the importance of image, style and representations and the way these have encouraged a mediated construction of crime and criminal justice. It takes on the postmodern position that ‘style is substance’ and the meaning of something is based on its representation to suggest that crime can be best understood as part of an ‘image driven media loop’ (Ferrell 2001). Ferrell points to a number of areas in which this new theoretical approach has developed. First, crime is seen as a subcultural phenomenon organized around symbolic communication. Cultural criminology also examines the mediated construction of crime and the control of crime; considering the interconnections between the criminal justice system and the mass media – it looks at how certain activities come to be constructed as crimes and other do not. It also considers the everyday consumption of crime as drama and entertainment: The notion of cultural criminology references the increasing analytic attention that many criminologists now give to popular culture constructions, and especially mass media constructions, of crime and crime control. (Ferrell 1999, p. 395) A good deal of research in cultural criminology has looked at ‘subcultural style’, seeing this style as deﬁning the way deviants and criminals characterize their activity and also the way such activities are viewed and constructed from outside. It has also introduced the idea of ‘culture as crime’, whereby aspects of popular culture become criminalized: performers, producers, distributors, and retailers of rap and “gangsta rap” music have likewise faced arrest and conviction on obscenity charges, legal conﬁscation of albums, highly publicized protests, boycotts, hearings organized by political ﬁgures and police ofﬁcials, ongoing media campaigns and legal proceedings against them of promoting – indeed, directly causing – crime and delinquency. (Ferrell 1999, p. 405) In addition to framing how crime and criminal activities are viewed, the media also frame and determine our perceptions of crime control. With regards to the police, ‘reality’ policing programmes determine public perceptions of the police and will play a part in recruitment to the police. Policing is interpreted as a set of practices situated, 38

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like criminal practices, within subcultural conventions of meaning, symbolism and style (Ferrell, 1999 and see Chapter 6). Indeed, the postmodern analysis of the relationship between the media and crime can be applied to all areas where the two intersect.

FURTHER READING Jewkes Y. (2004) Media and Crime, London: Sage. A clear introduction to the study of crime and the mass media, the ﬁrst chapter provides a thorough overview of major theoretical perspectives on the media and how they relate to the analysis of crime. McQuail D. (2005) Mass Communications Theory: An Introduction, 5th edn, London: Sage. This standard text provides extensive coverage of theories of the media and is now in its ﬁfth edition. Reiner R. (2007) ‘Media-made Criminality:The Representation of Crime in the Mass Media’, in Maguire M., Morgan R. and Reiner R. (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, 4th edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press. This article considers the content, consequences and causes of media images of crime.

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CHAPTER 3 ❚ Cohen: folk devils and moral panics ❚ Young: drug use and moral panic

The Media and Moral Panics – Theories and Examples

❚ Explaining moral panics: Goode and Ben-Yehuda ❚ Cohen: folk devils and moral panics – a critique ❚ Moral panics in history ❚ Recent moral panics ❚ Revisiting the notion of moral panics

Moral panic is such a well-established term, both in academic and everyday vocabulary, that it is surprising to recall it has only become widely used since the work of Stan Cohen in the early 1970s on youth subcultures. Since then the term has been regularly used in the media to refer to all sorts of anti-social and/or criminal behaviours. Essentially, a moral panic refers to an exaggerated reaction, from the media, the police or wider public, to the activities of particular social groups. These activities may well be relatively trivial but have been reported in a somewhat sensationalized form in the media; and such reporting and publicity has then led to an increase in general anxiety and concern about those activities. So a moral panic is an exaggerated response to a type of behaviour that is seen as a social problem – the term indicates an over-reaction on the part of the media and/or other social institutions. Furthermore, this over-reaction magniﬁes the original area of concern. Indeed, it leads to the social group (and, as a consequence, the behaviour and activities they engage in) being viewed by the wider society as ‘folk devils’ – another term coined by Cohen. Indeed, Cohen’s book on the mods and rockers of the 1960s was titled Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers and therefore, as Newburn (2007) puts it, has ‘the distinction of containing two terms, folk devils and moral panics, which have subsequently entered popular terminology’.

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Given the status of Cohen’s studies in this area, we will start by considering his analysis before looking at examples of media reporting of moral panics from before his work through to more contemporary examples.

COHEN: FOLK DEVILS AND MORAL PANICS Cohen’s study started out as his doctoral thesis and was an attempt to offer a sociological explanation for a particular and immediate concern – the delinquent behaviour of (and between) two deviant youth subcultures – the Mods and the Rockers. However, Cohen was aware that his analysis had implications beyond the immediate subject matter. In the preface to the ﬁrst edition of the book, written in 1971, he asks ‘who on earth is still worried about the Mods and Rockers?’ And in an extended introduction to the second edition (1980) he points out that the book was ‘out of date even when it originally appeared in 1972’. Cohen sets out the basis of his argument in the ﬁrst paragraph of his study – a paragraph which has been extensively quoted and which provides what has become the generally accepted deﬁnition of a moral panic. As with more recent scholarly work on moral panics (for example, Critcher 2003; Jewkes 2004; Newburn 2007) we will start our brief overview with this quote. Societies appear to be subject, every now and then, to periods of moral panic. A condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become deﬁned as a threat to societal values and interests; its nature is presented in a stylized and stereotypical fashion by the mass media; the moral barricades are manned by editors, bishops, politicians and other right-thinking people; socially accredited experts pronounce their diagnoses and solutions; ways of coping are evolved or (more often) resorted to; the condition then disappears, submerges or deteriorates and becomes more visible. Sometimes the object of the panic is quite novel and at other times it is something which has been in existence long enough, but suddenly appears in the limelight. Sometimes the panic passes over and is forgotten, except in folk-lore and collective memory; at other times it has more serious and longlasting repercussions and might produce such changes as those in legal and social policy or even in the way society conceives itself. (Cohen 1972, p. 9) Cohen then points out that there have been recurrent moral panics in post-war Britain over various forms of youth culture whose behaviour is deviant or delinquent – including The Teddy Boys, Mods and Rockers, Hells Angels and Skinheads. These groups have been seen as distinctive social types or groups, not just in terms of their behaviour but also in terms of their style. As the quote above suggests, the panics associated with such groups have been transient and soon forgotten. This is further illustrated by Cohen’s comment: At the beginning of the decade (the 1960s), the term ‘Modernist’ referred simply to a style of dress, the term ‘Rocker’ was hardly known … Five years later, a newspaper 41

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editor was to refer to the Mods and Rockers incidents as ‘without parallel in English history’ and troop reinforcements were rumoured to have been sent to quell possible widespread disturbances. Now, another ﬁve years later, these groups have all but disappeared from the public consciousness. (1972, p. 10) In terms of its theoretical stance, Cohen’s seminal study on moral panics was clearly based on the labelling or interactionist perspective – an approach with a strong focus on how society labels rule-breakers as belonging to particular deviant groups and how once a person or group is labelled, the actions they undertake are viewed and interpreted in terms of this label. A key part of the labelling process involves the mass media – and its role in deﬁning and shaping social problems: The media have long operated as agents of moral indignation in their own right: even if they are not self-consciously engaged in crusading or muck-raking, their very reporting of certain ‘facts’ can be sufﬁcient to generate concern, anxiety, indignation or panic. (Cohen 1972, p. 16) Given that the media devote a massive amount of space and time to deviant behaviour, it is not surprising that a large part of Cohen’s study is spent examining the role of the mass media in creating moral panics and folk devils (an area we will consider in more detail below, pp. 44–45). In order to do justice to Cohen’s argument, we need to look brieﬂy at the actual events his study was attempting to explain – the clashes between the rival youth group, Mods and Rockers, at seaside towns in the mid-1960s. Our brief review will lean on Critcher’s (2003) more detailed analysis. The Essex resort of Clacton was the scene of the ﬁrst ‘event’ over Easter 1964. Groups of young people from London and other parts of south-east England, some of whom were identiﬁable as Mods and others as Rockers, gathered at Clacton on this wet bank holiday weekend. There was little for them to do and a few minor scufﬂes and incidents occurred; after two days of relatively mild violence the press were full of blaring headlines on ‘the terror’ wreaked by ‘wild ones’ (see Question break below) and newspaper editorials called for government action. The next bank holiday, Whitsun, police, journalists and youths were expecting trouble at other southern coastal towns (with Brighton, Margate and Eastbourne the venues selected by the Mods and Rockers). Again a series of minor incidents provoked sensationalized newspaper reporting; with police forces co-ordinating massive police operations – including turning back youths as they arrived at seaside towns and arresting those who showed any resistance. After a few more such weekends, the seaside gatherings declined as the youth cultures (particularly the Mods) petered out or developed into other subcultural groupings, such as Skinheads and Hippies. Cohen argued that the social reaction engendered by these events depended on the sort of information available in the public arena; and that as most people have no ﬁrsthand knowledge of deviants they are reliant on the media. The media are particularly important in the early stages of the social reaction through their producing of the images that the wider public will assimilate. Cohen highlights three processes which 42

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set up and establish the social reaction and consequent moral panic. First, there is an exaggeration or distortion of the events themselves – through exaggerating the numbers involved and the extent of violence and damage that occurred. Second, through predicting that such events will recur; and third, through symbolization – using language so that, for instance, Mod, comes to stand for a whole form of youth style and status.

QUESTION BREAK

FOLK DEVILS AND MORAL PANICS Mods and Rockers jailed after seaside riots Scores of youths have been given prison sentences following a Whitsun weekend of violent clashes between gangs of Mods and Rockers at a number of resorts on the south coast of England. Yesterday two youths were taken to hospital with knife wounds and 51 were arrested in Margate after hundreds of teenagers converged on the town for the holiday weekend … Three offenders were jailed for three months each and ﬁve more sent to detention centres for up to six months. In Brighton, two youths were jailed for three months and others were ﬁned. More than 1,000 teenagers were involved in skirmishes on the beach and promenade last night. They threw deckchairs around, broke them up to make bonﬁres, shouted obscenities at each other and at passers-by, jostled holidaymakers and terriﬁed elderly residents … In Margate, there were running battles between police and up to 400 youths on the beach early yesterday morning. Bottles were thrown and two ofﬁcers were slightly hurt. Later, on the high street, around 40 young men smashed council ﬂat windows and vandalized a pub and hardware shop. Last night, hundreds of young men and girls were still wandering around the resort long after the last train had left … There were further clashes at Bournemouth and Clacton. (From: BBC News Online On This Day, 18 May 1964 ) The concept of Mods and Rockers actually crystallized in the public consciousness at a speciﬁc place and time: Clacton-on-Sea. Essex, during the Easter Bank Holiday weekend of 1964. After two days of comparatively mild violence in the wet seaside resort – the worst was a shop window being broken – the newspapers were full of blaring headlines – ‘Day of Terror By Scooter Groups’, ‘Youngsters Beat Up Town – 97 Leather Jacket Arrests’, ‘Wild Ones Invade Seaside’.

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It was under this glare of publicity that the idea of scooter gangs – Mods – versus motorbike gangs – Rockers – really ﬂourished. Until then they had not been rigidly separate groups … In truth, especially in cities, the groups were often inter-related, often from the same housing estates: only separated by fashion or generations, older brother/ younger brother, etc. (From: www.the59club.com)

QUESTIONS From the accounts above, what evidence is there of the media ‘amplifying’ the panic or Mods and Rockers? What youth subcultural groups have hit the headlines since then? Research a more recent youth subcultural group and describe the media coverage of them. What similarities and differences can you suggest between this coverage and that of the Mods and Rockers in the 1960s? Cohen’s work was clearly more focused on moral panics and the social and media reaction rather than the actual deviant and delinquent behaviour and explanations for it – a point he acknowledges in introducing the second edition of his classic study, ‘the book was more a study of moral panics than of folk devils’ (Cohen 1980). So, before we turn to a brief look at other examples of moral panics it would be helpful to consider Cohen’s comments on the links between the media and deviant behaviour. He was well aware his study did not attempt to explain deviance and that the social reaction he examined was, as he put it, ‘the “effective” rather than “original” cause of deviance’. In other words, his work did not attempt to provide a theoretical explanation for this type of delinquent behaviour. Cohen highlights different strategies for studying social reaction, such as sampling public opinion on particular types of deviance and constructing ethnographic and historic accounts of the reactions to such behaviour. However, in order to understand the reaction to deviance by the public and the authorities, it is vital to consider the nature of information that they receive. In modern societies, most information is received second hand, usually processed by the mass media and so subject to their deﬁnitions of what constitutes ‘news’ and how it is presented. And this information is also affected by the constraints that newspapers and broadcasters have to operate under – both commercial and political constraints. It is clear from studying media responses to deviant behaviour that the media can play on the concerns of the public and can create social problems quite suddenly and dramatically. The media reaction to deviant behaviour can lead to a process of deviance ampliﬁcation (see the section below for a fuller explanation of this process), whereby media attention increases the isolation of the deviant group who are forced to continue and develop their deviant behaviour and so on. Certainly, the way the media reported the behaviour of the 44

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Mods and Rockers had a major inﬂuence on public social reaction to those groups. As Cohen puts it: The public image of these folk devils was invariably tied up to a number of highly visual scenarios associated with their appearance: youths chasing across the beach, brandishing deck chairs above their heads … sleeping on the beaches and so on. (1980, p. 20) Cohen emphasizes the importance of the growth and spread of a generalized belief about a particular form of behaviour or group of deviants and points out that, for the most part, such generalized beliefs are spread through the mass media. Of course, social reaction does not solely rely on the media. There is also initial, onthe-spot reaction from people who are part of or witness to the particular behaviour and there is also the organized reaction of the system of social control, often the police. Nonetheless, the ‘transmission and diffusion of the reaction in the mass media’ is, for Cohen, a crucial element in explaining moral panics.

YOUNG: DRUG USE AND MORAL PANIC At around the same time as Cohen’s original research and study, Jock Young, a fellow sociologist and criminologist (and indeed a co-author with Cohen of later studies, including The Manufacture of News 1981), explored the moral panic that developed around the drug use of ‘hippies’ in the mid to late 1960s. Indeed, Young’s ﬁndings were ﬁrst published as a chapter in a book edited by Stan Cohen, Images of Deviance (1971). In particular, he examined the social reaction to the use of marijuana in the Notting Hill area of West London and described the process of ‘deviance ampliﬁcation’ – a process that occurs as a consequence of a moral panic over a speciﬁc type of behaviour. Basically, deviance ampliﬁcation is a reinforcing and snowballing effect that happens as a result of a negative social reaction to such criminal or deviant behaviour. So, Young’s study is an examination of the effects of the moral panic about drug use on this behaviour in London in the late 1960s. The title of Young’s study was ‘The Role of the Police as Ampliﬁers of Deviance’ and we will look at it brieﬂy before going on to consider an evaluation of Cohen’s analysis of moral panics. As implied in the title to his study, Young considers the effect of the beliefs and stereotypes held by the police about drug users and the conﬂict between the police and the drug user. However, in terms of our focus on social reaction and moral panics, it is Young’s examination of the notion of deviance ampliﬁcation and the relationship between society and the deviance that is most pertinent. Young describes the interaction process between the police and drug user in a sequential manner that is worth reproducing from the original: (i) the police act against the drug users in terms of their stereotypes; (ii) the drug user group ﬁnds itself in a new situation, which it must interpret and adapt to in a changed manner; 45

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(iii) the police react in a slightly different fashion to the changed group; (iv) the drug users interpret and adapt to this new situation; (v) the police react to these new changes; and so on (Young 1971, p. 33) Young goes on to look at how the mass media present information about deviant groups, and in this case drug users, using extracts from the popular press, including this from The People of 21 September 1969: Hippie Thugs – The Sordid Truth : Drugtaking, couples making love while others look on, rule by a heavy mob armed with iron bars, foul language, ﬁlth and stench, THAT is the scene inside the hippies’ Fortress in London’s Piccadilly. These are not rumours but facts – sordid facts which will shock ordinary decent family loving people. He argues that ‘our knowledge of deviants not only is stereotypical because of the distortions of the mass media but is also one-dimensional’. The information that is available about deviants is based on a ‘gross misperception’ because of stereotyped information ‘purveyed via the mass media’. He goes on to suggest this leads to a social reaction based on stereotyped fantasies, rather than accurate knowledge and information; and ‘because the criterion for inclusion in the media is newsworthiness it is possible for moral panics over a particular type of deviancy to be created by the sudden dissemination of information about it’. Of particular interest to our area of study, Young also considers how the ampliﬁcation of deviance (in this case drug use) leads to the fantasy being translated into the reality. He argued that, over time, the police action against marijuana users led to the intensiﬁcation of their deviant behaviour that included a change in their life style, so that ‘certain facets of the stereotype became the actuality’. We will ﬁnish our review by summarizing Young’s description of the main aspects of the social world of the marijuana user and how this leads to ampliﬁcation and intensiﬁcation of their deviant behaviour. First, intensive police action increases the cohesion and organization of the drug-using community, with drug users uniting in a common sense of injustice at how their behaviour is treated by the police and portrayed by the media. Second, this police action leads the drug-user to segregating himself (sic) from the wider society of non-drug users. Third, the more the drug users accept their deviant identity and norms, the less chance there is of them re-entering mainstream society. Fourth, as the deviant behaviour becomes more entrenched so police concern with and reaction to that behaviour increases, and drug use becomes more of a secretive activity. And as a side effect, drug-use becomes a symbol of rebellion against an unfair and unjust system. Fifth, increased and more severe police action leads to the price increase of marijuana; and as the proﬁts to be made from selling increase so professional dealers begin to emerge, and other criminal activities, including the selling of different drugs, overlap with marijuana use. Sixth, the reactions and developments described above increase levels of suspicion and, in the context of perceived police persecution, encourage feelings of paranoia among the drug users. 46

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In this ‘us and them’ context, the marijuana user and the user of ‘harder’ drugs, such as Heroin, will feel some sort of common identity as victims of police persecution. Finally, as the mass media excites and exacerbates public indignation and panic over marijuana use, pressure on the police to prevent such behaviour increases. This leads to the police arresting more marijuana users and, consequently, the mass media and public reacting to the new higher ﬁgures of drug offenders with even greater panic. Young’s study, then, paints a very clear picture of how social reaction to a type of deviant behaviour can lead to a moral panic that actually increases and intensiﬁes that behaviour. His diagrammatic representation of deviance ampliﬁcation is reproduced below.

EXPLAINING MORAL PANICS: GOODE AND BEN-YEHUDA Before turning to an evaluation of Cohen’s work, we will look at Goode and BenYehuda’s study on moral panics, published in 1994 and dedicated to Stan Cohen. They differentiate moral panics from social problems and moral crusades – according to Critcher (2003) the former (social problems) lack ‘folk devils or wild ﬂuctuations of concern’ and the latter (moral crusades) are ‘organized agitations initiated by moral entrepreneurs’ (Critcher 2003). Goode and Ben-Yehuda highlight ﬁve key criteria of moral panics: • • •

•

There has to be a heightened level of concern over the behaviour (and the consequences of that behaviour) of a certain group. This leads to increased levels of hostility towards the group who engage in the behaviour. The concern and hostility have to be met with a certain degree of consensus from the society as a whole that the threat caused by the group’s behaviour is real and serious. The behaviour is reacted to with a sense of disproportionality; as Goode and Ben-Yehuda put it, ‘the concept of moral panic rests on disproportionality’ with public concern being in excess of what is appropriate given the objective harm done by the behaviour. 47

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•

By their very nature, moral panics are volatile – they erupt quickly and subside suddenly.

Goode and Ben-Yehuda then offer three different explanations for moral panics. First, a grassroots model that suggests panic originates with the wider public when they are worried or concerned about an issue. Second, an ‘elite-engineered’ model, whereby an elite group deliberately promotes a campaign to generate concern and panic in the public over an issue that may not in itself be terribly harmful to society as a whole; and this is done to divert attention away from other problems or issues that elite do not particularly want brought into the public arena. Third, the interest group model suggests moral panics emanate from ‘the middle rungs of power and status’, from groups such as professional associations, religious groups, police departments or the media themselves. Goode and Ben-Yehuda argue that it is a combination of grassroots and interest group models that offers the best explanations – without a grassroots feeling a moral panic would have no foundation and without interest group involvement it would have no means of expression (Critcher 2003).

COHEN: FOLK DEVILS AND MORAL PANICS – A CRITIQUE In an evaluation and critique of the ‘moral panic model’, Jewkes (2004) considered the processes involved in establishing a moral panic that were highlighted by Cohen and then raised some problems with his model. The analysis of moral panics developed by Cohen was clearly focused on youth subcultures and the symbolism associated with them. And since his study moral panics have been developed around a wide range of youth subcultures or groups, including punk rockers, muggers, ravers and ecstasy users, lager louts and hoodies. In spite of the diversity of these and numerous other groups, Jewkes points to some key factors identiﬁable in most moral panics. Although we will only consider some of these factors here, it is useful to list the ﬁve ‘deﬁning features of moral panics’ which she deﬁned: • •

• • •

Moral panics occur when the media turn a reasonably ordinary event and present it as extraordinary. The media, in particular, set in motion a deviance ampliﬁcation spiral, through which the subjects of the panic are viewed as a source of moral decline and social disintegration. Moral panics clarify the moral boundaries of the society in which they occur. Moral panics occur during periods of rapid social change and anxiety. Young people are the usual target of moral panics, their behaviour is ‘regarded as a barometer to test the health or sickness of a society’. (Jewkes 2004, p. 67)

Cohen paid particular attention to the role of the media in constructing moral panics according to their criteria of ‘news values’ – as he put it, ‘much of this study will be devoted to understanding the role of the mass media in creating moral panics and 48

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folk devils’ (Cohen 1973, p. 17). Exaggeration and distortion were seen as inevitable in order for a potential news event to become an actual story; and there will also be a degree of predictability that the event/issue being described will inevitably happen again. In terms of deviance ampliﬁcation, journalists and newspaper editors are seen as ‘moral entrepreneurs’ who, along with politicians, pressure groups and others, set in motion the spiral by which deviant groups become criminalized and marginalized. The deviance-ampliﬁcation process describes how, as the negative reaction from society towards particular groups escalates, so the ‘deviants’ become more isolated and, as a consequence, more criminally oriented. While the spiral may last for months, it never spirals out of control because, in time, media and public interest will wane and the particular subject of the panic, the folk devils of the time, will become more familiar and so perceived as less of a threat. Jewkes also makes the point that identifying a group as a threat establishes a division or boundary between ‘us’ and ‘them’ – between the decent, moral and respectable and the deviant and undesirable outsiders. This ﬁts in with Durkheim’s classic theoretical position on deviant behaviour (1895), whereby such behaviour is seen as establishing moral boundaries of right and wrong that strengthen the ‘collective conscience’ of a society. So, moral panics can be seen to draw communities together in a sense of collective outrage and can also make the ‘respectable’ feel more sure that they are ‘good’ in comparison to others who are much worse. The ﬁnal point Jewkes makes is about the tendency for moral panics to target youth. She points out that, although the category of ‘youth’ came into its own in the 1950s and after, young people have been perceived as a social problem for many years – and well before the 1960s (see Pearson 1983, and pp. 5–8). Before moving on to consider other examples of moral panics, it would be helpful to consider some of the problems or ﬂaws with the notion of moral panics. Jewkes (2004) raises a number of areas of ambiguity and contention in the deﬁnitions, terminology and application of the moral panic model. First, there is a lack of clarity over the deﬁning characteristics of a moral panic; in Cohen’s work moral panics are seen as short-lived episodes that fade away after a few weeks or months; however, some areas of concern may last for considerably longer – concerns over juvenile delinquency, for instance, have been present for hundreds of years (see Chapter 1). Although moral panics deﬁne moral boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable behaviour, there is little or no focus on why groups step outside of those boundaries and behave the way that they do in the ﬁrst place. Linked with the issue of moral panics and history, there is an assumption that the rapid pace of social change in recent decades leads to more frequent moral panics, although there is no real evidence that the pace of change is any more rapid than it was 100 or 200 years ago. Second, Jewkes questions the assumption that the deviant groups involved in moral panics are economically marginalized and behave as they do as a result of boredom and/or ﬁnancial hardship, as Cohen suggested in the case of the Mods and Rockers. However, youth subcultures of the 1960s could equally be interpreted as a product of the rising afﬂuence of British society and youth, in particular, in the ‘swinging sixties’. Also, the moral panic ‘thesis’ tends to over emphasize the centrality of the media, with analysis focusing on the media rather than the actual deviant behaviour – on the reaction rather than the causes and long-term effects. 49

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This, Jewkes suggests, leads a ‘superﬁcial analysis’ as well as encouraging a shift in the media towards ‘sensationalized reporting and public entertainment’. In later editions of his study, Cohen discussed some of the shortcomings of the moral panic model, a point acknowledged by Jewkes, who concludes her commentary with the following comment and reference to Cohen: Ultimately, perhaps, moral panics should be regarded in the way that Cohen intended – as a means of conceptualizing the lines of power in society and the ways in which ‘we are manipulated into taking some things too seriously and other things not seriously enough. (Jewkes 2004, p. 85) In his introduction to the second edition of Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1980), and as mentioned earlier, Cohen acknowledged that the book was out of date as soon as it was written. He also makes the point that the rather pessimistic ending to the ﬁrst edition has been more than justiﬁed in the intervening years – the ﬁrst edition ended with the following comment: More moral panics will be generated and other, as yet nameless folk devils will be created … because our society as present structured will continue to generate problems for some of its members – like working class adolescents – and then condemn whatever solutions these groups ﬁnd. (1980, p(i)). In these intervening years (basically the 1970s), Cohen points to the developments of the ‘skinhead years, the brief glamrock interlude, the punk explosion, the revival of both the Teds and the Mods (and) the continued noise of football hooliganism’. He also looks at other academic considerations of moral panics and the developing interest in the relationship between deviance and the media. In particular, he refers to the work of Hall and colleagues at the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies on the phenomenon of ‘mugging’, published as Policing the Crisis in 1978. This study examined the moral panic about mugging in 1972 and 1973 but focused more on the role of the agencies of social control, rather than the emphasis on social reaction and labelling in Cohen’s original work. The crime of mugging attracted a great deal of media attention in the early 1970s and Hall and his colleagues’ work showed how issues of race, youth and crime were condensed into the image of the mugger as a ‘violent black youth’. A number of individual ‘mugging cases’ were prominently reported in the media with stories highlighting what was described as a new and frightening type of crime on the streets of Britain. As mentioned, muggers were portrayed as black, which contributed to the view that ethnic minority immigrant groups were to blame for the breakdown of society. As Hall and colleagues could not ﬁnd any real basis (from crime statistics) for this panic, they developed a Marxist, critical analysis that argued that the moral panic about mugging was encouraged by the government and the media as a way of deﬂecting attention away from other issues and problems in society, such as growing unemployment. 50

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MORAL PANICS IN HISTORY So far we have focused on the sociological concept of moral panic as it was developed by ‘sociologists of deviance’, led by Stan Cohen, in the 1970s. However, behaviour that has produced strong, and panicky, responses from the wider society has a much longer history than this. Before looking at more recent examples of moral panics, we will consider two earlier, historical examples of behaviour and responses to it that would be likely to be seen as moral panics if they had occurred in contemporary society. In the ﬁrst chapter of this book, we looked at Pearson’s study (1983) of the history of juvenile delinquency and reactions to it and one of the ‘respectable fears’ he examined, the ‘garotting’ craze of the mid Victorian period, will be our ﬁrst example. Then we will look at an example from the 1600s, the witch craze that swept Europe for a number of years. Garotting Pearson (1983), among other historians, shows us that for generations British society has been plagued by the same concerns and fears about criminal and deviant behaviour. In particular, he highlights the way that each generation tends to characterize the youth of the day, and particularly speciﬁc youth groups, as problematic, anti-social, deviant and so on. In his historical reviews of juvenile crime and delinquency, he refers to the panic in the mid-Victorian period, around 1850s and 1860s, over a new variety of crime called ‘garotting’, a Victorian parallel with the more recent crime of mugging that involved strangling and choking the victim in the course of robbery. The press reacted in a way that helped amplify the concerns over this crime, with Punch magazine launching an ‘anti-garotte’ movement, advocating the use of a variety of rather bizarre anti-robbery devices, such as spiked metal collars. While this may have been slightly tongue-in-cheek, it is clear from the letters in the press of the day that there was a real panic over garotting. While the language of the day is rather less sensationalized than might be found in the popular press today, it is worth quoting at some length from letters to The Times to illustrate this reaction and panic. On Saturday, the 1st inst., when returning home at night, and as usual walking quick, I was, without any warning, suddenly seized from behind by some one, who, placing the bend of his arm to my throat, and then clasping his right wrist with his left-hand, thereby forming a powerful lever, succeeded in effectually strangling me for a time, and rendering me incapable of moving or even calling for assistance … whilst a second man easily riﬂed me of all he could ﬁnd. I was then violently thrown to the ground, or rather I found myself lying there when I came to my senses … Now, this robbery was committed on one of the most frequented highways out of London, viz., Hampstead-road … and I am convinced that an application of this human garotte to an elderly person, or anyone in a bad state of health, might very easily occasion death. (Letter to The Times, 12 February 1851) 51

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Observing in your paper of to-day a letter from a gentleman who was nearly strangled and robbed of his watch by this abominable practice, I think it right to say that about a month since I was treated in exactly a similar manner. This was also in a public thoroughfare, and within a few yards of a public house that was open. (Letter to The Times, 17 July 1851) I wish to add my testimony to that already given in your paper with respect to the cowardly system of Thugee now being carried on in the streets of London. About three weeks back I was returning home along the Haymarket about 12 o’clock at night, and, having occasion to turn aside up a court, I was suddenly seized round the throat by one rufﬁan, while another snatched my watch and struck me on the head … rendering me senseless. (Letter to The Times, 19 July 1851) As mentioned, in response to this street crime, Punch magazine published cartoons and adverts promoting protection from garrotters (see advert below in question break on p. 53). There was also a boom in the security/protection business with people offering their services as bodyguards, as illustrated in the following advert: The Bayswater Brothers (whose height is respectively 6 feet 4 inches and 6 feet 11, and the united breadth of whose shoulders extends to as much as 3 yards, 1 foot, 5 inches) give, respectfully, notice to the Gentry and Public of Paddington, Kensington, Stoke Newington, Chelsea, Eaton Square and Shepherd’s Bush, that they will be most happy, upon all social and jovial expeditions, such as dinner and evening parties, as well as tee-total meetings, to escort elderly or nervous persons in the streets after dark, and to wait for them during their pleasure, so as to be able to escort them home again in safety. No suburb, however dangerous, objected to, and the worst garotting districts well known, as the Brothers, both BILL and JIM, were for several months in the Police Force. Terms, so much per head per hour, according to the person’s walk of life. A considerable reduction on taking a party of twelve or more. Distance no object. Testimonials, and ample security given. For further particulars, Apply to B.B, Royal Human Society, Trafalgar Square. (Punch, 31 January 1857) However, the reaction was not limited to the press; and the panic over this form of street crime led to hard line approaches from politicians, as ever seeking public approval for being tough on crime. In particular, there was a call for a return to harsh physical punishment, such as ﬂogging – a call that was reﬂected in the passing of the Garotters’ Act in 1863. Although the Garotters’ Act was not merely the result of the panic, it is clear that this new crime provided the impetus for such legislation. The Act also reﬂected a move away from the more reformative, humanitarian approach to punishment and imprisonment that had characterized the early nineteenth century period (for instance, the religious emphasis on prisoners doing penance and emerging with puriﬁed souls, highlighted by John Howard and the early prison reformers of that period); and a consequent support for a more hard line, repressive approach to dealing of criminals. Floggings, for example, had long been associated with the public school system and with life in the army and navy, and was widely supported 52

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by politicians and other leaders of the period, who had, of course, passed through those institutions themselves. Certainly, the Garotters’ Act, and the ﬂogging of garrotters, chimed with the mood of the day, as indicated in the following contemporary comment: A parliamentary return just issued affords us the gratifying information that the Garotter’s Act of 1863, punishing attempts at robbery, accompanied by violence, with ﬂogging, has not been allowed to remain a dead letter. In the ﬁrst year of the operation of this salutary measure, under its beneﬁcent provisions, according to the document above referred to, 19 prisoners were ﬂogged in England … There are objections to public ﬂogging … But one thing might be done to give the roughs, who are inclined to be Garotters, some idea of what the ﬂogging inﬂicted on a Garotter is. An elaborate photograph of the face of every such criminal condemned to be ﬂogged taken whilst he is experiencing the sensation excited by the scourge, at the moment when his features are contorted with their strongest expression. What a pretty portrait-gallery might thus have been derived from the nineteen Garotters who were ﬂogged in 1863! (Punch, 8 April 1865)

QUESTION BREAK Consider the letters to The Times above and the example of an advert for the ‘anti-garotte’ collar below. DO YOU WISH TO AVOID BEING STRANGLED!! IF so, try our Patent Antigarotte Collar, which enables Gentlemen to walk the streets of London in perfect safety at all hours of the day or night. THESE UNIQUE ARTICLES OF DRESS Are made to measure, of the hardest steel, and are warranted to withstand the grip of THE MOST MUSCULAR RUFFIAN IN THE METROPOLIS, Who would get black in the face himself before he could make the slightest impression upon his intended victim. They are highly polished and Elegantly Studded with the Sharpest Spikes, Thus combining a most recherché appearance with perfect protection from the murderous attacks which occur every day in the most frequented thoroughfares. Price 7s. 6d, or six for 40s. WHITE, CHOKER, AND Co. Punch, 27 September 1856

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QUESTIONS How would you describe the way that the media portrays young people today? How might the crime of garotting be reported in contemporary newspapers? The 1860s was a very different society from today. From your knowledge of history, do you feel that London and other large cities at this period of time would be safer places to walk around at night than such cities nowadays? Give reasons for your answer.

The European witch-craze Although not limited to a short period of time, as with the examples of moral panics looked at so far, and in line with the deﬁnition offered by Cohen, there were elements of the European witch-craze of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which merit it being considered as an early, historical example of this phenomenon. As mentioned at the start of this chapter, general usage of the term moral panic is only relatively recent. In his classic study of the European witch-craze, Trevor-Roper (1967) saw it as part of a ‘general crisis’ and he was very clear that his subject of study was the ‘witch-craze’ and not the belief in witches. He was interested in the inﬂammation and incorporation of the belief in witches into a ‘bizarre, but coherent intellectual system which, at certain socially determined times, gave to otherwise unorganized peasant credulity a centrally directed, ofﬁcially blessed persecuting force’ (p. 9). Beliefs in witches and the casting of spells have occurred throughout history and in societies throughout the world; the ‘witch-craze’ refers to the organized and systematic ‘demonology’ which Trevor-Roper suggested that the medieval Church constructed out of those beliefs and which, at this time in history, seemed to gather a momentum of its own. While there was no deﬁnite starting date for the European witch-craze, from the sixteenth century many Europeans developed a growing concern over the phenomenon of witchcraft, often seeing it as a sort of hostile and anti-Christian sect. This was reﬂected in governments, and local communities, organizing ‘hunts’ for alleged witches – accusing, torturing and executing thousands of people, almost exclusively women. The belief that women were sinful and had the power of the devil within them had developed from previous centuries – women were seen as having the ability to summon the devil for sexual intercourse. Most people accused of witchcraft were single women, usually poor and the hunts have been seen as an attempt to keep women ‘in their place’. The witch-hunts were often instigated by hysterical women and children who accused relatives and neighbours of outrageous crimes, with witnesses bribed or threatened in order to prosecute the accused. As these witch-hunts increased so the confessions drawn from supposed witches became more detailed. And, as Trevor-Roper points out, it was hardly surprising 54

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that confessions were almost always secured from those accused of being witches: The ordinary rules of evidence, like the ordinary limits of torture, were suspended … And the circumstantial evidence need not be very cogent: it was sufﬁcient to discover a wart, by which the familiar spirit was suckled; an insensitive spot which did not bleed when pricked … or an incapacity to shed tears. Recourse could even be had to ‘lighter indicia’, such as a tendency to look down when accused, signs of fear, or the mere aspect of a witch, old, ugly or smelly. Any of these … might justify the use of torture to produce the confession, which was proof, or the refusal to confess, which was even more cogent proof and justiﬁed even more ferocious tortures and nastier death. (1967, p. 45) The witch-trials were run by genuine believers in witchcraft and their aim seemed to be to exterminate witches as evil conspirators who worked with the devil. Perhaps the largest witch hunt in Europe was held between 1645 and 1647 in East Anglia and led by Mathew Hopkins, a self-appointed Witchﬁnder General (see question break below for more information on Hopkins and his witch-hunting). Witch-hunting spread in England after 1542 after the passing of a statute against witchcraft, with estimates of a 1000 people, mostly women, being hung for practicing witchcraft. Women were invariably accused of witchcraft – they were seen as the weaker sex and more liable to fall under the spell of the devil. Once established, the stereotype of the witch created its own folk-lore, which then became a centralizing force in establishing the craze or panic, as with other stereotypes linked with moral panics. As Trevor-Roper puts it: Once the folk-lore had been created and had been impressed by the clergy upon every mind, it served as a psychological as well as a social stereotype. (1967, p. 120) Various theoretical explanations have been offered for the European witchcraze and it would be useful to mention some of these brieﬂy. In providing an overview of the main historical theories, Pavlac (2006) suggested there were ‘ten general historical theories’. Here, we will mention those that relate to the notion of moral panic. Mass hysteria theory saw witchcraft as a sort of illness and that certain peasants became clinically neurotic and even psychotic over witchcraft and in a group panic went after witches – with sources of the panic including illnesses that seemed to have no cause. A more conspiratorial explanation saw devil worshipping as existing as a subversive attack on the ruling Christian order and church, with the tortured confessions of witches taken at their word. Witchcraft was also seen as a continuation of pagan religions that was misinterpreted by Christian witch-hunters as Satanic. More sociologically based theoretical explanations include the argument that witch-hunts can be beneﬁcial for a society as they help deﬁne what is right and wrong, what is acceptable and unacceptable, and so help to reinforce social boundaries or 55

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moral, acceptable behaviour. This positive approach, a social functionalist position, contrasts with more critical, social control explanations, suggesting that governments of the period exploited the fear of witchcraft in order to centralize authority and expand government intervention. Of course, this brief account has only provided a very general overview. The intensity, duration and viciousness of witch-hunts and trials varied from place to place. The witch-craze itself died out in the later seventeenth century, with the weakening in the absolute power of the church and clergy, the Enlightenment period and the developments in science.

QUESTION BREAK Witchﬁnder General During the period of the Witch Craze, an Essex man, Mathew Hopkins, became known as the Witchﬁnder General. Hopkins was an East Anglian lawyer who made it his mission to rid that area of witches. He waged a crusade against witches and his notoriety spread far and wide. Hopkins earned a fortune from his activity – up to 20 shillings a witch (compared to the average wage of two pence a day). Historians have suggested he was allowed to carry on virtually uncontrolled because of the Civil War, a time of general religious and political upheaval and chaos. By about 1647, people were becoming tired of Hopkins’ behaviour and he returned to his home town of Manningtree, Essex and died in that year. A ﬁlm made about him, starring Vincent Price and released in 1968, has become a cult horror classic. Although only a low budget ﬁlm, the magazine Total Film named it the ﬁfteenth greatest horror ﬁlm ever made. Consider the questions below on the brief account of Mathew Hopkins and his activities. Mathew Hopkins’s reign of terror lasted from 1645 to 1647. Little seems to be known of Mathew Hopkins prior to his becoming the self-appointed Witchﬁnder General. One of the ﬁrst cases instigated by him was against Elizabeth Clarke. She was apparently a one-legged widow and Hopkins soon had a confession out of her stating she was familiar with her ‘familiars’ – generally considered to be demons in the guise of animals or pets (cats, goats and so on). Women were often searched for a third teat as proof of satanic connections – as this third teat enabled them to nurture demons. Other signs were from various marks that might be on the body – beauty spots or even slight skin imperfections. In all it is suspected Hopkins was directly or indirectly associated with as many as 200 executions of witches.

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QUESTIONS Why do you think Hopkins was given so much freedom to hunt and persecute witches? Can you think of any more recent examples of people or group who have acted as ‘moral guardians’? Which of the explanations for the witch craze do you ﬁnd most convincing? Can you think of any others?

RECENT MORAL PANICS There is a danger that the notion of media panic can be applied somewhat indiscriminately to all sorts of quite transient examples of youthful behaviour and/or delinquency; and in our discussion we are keen to keep the focus on the social reaction as led by the mass media. Having said that, there have been many recent examples of youthful behaviour that could be considered as having produced a moral panic. In his book that focused solely on the media and moral panics, Critcher (2003) discussed a range of such recent examples, including the rave/ecstasy culture of the late 1980s and early 1990s, the reaction to video nasties in the 1980s and 1990s, new age travellers in the mid-1980s and, periodically, child abuse in families. Here, we will discuss one more recent example, the panic surrounding ‘hoodies’, and one example of a moral panic that was examined by Critcher, paedophilia. Hoodies A recent example of a style of dress worn by young people, rather than what could be termed a youth subculture, that has excited some degree of panic and paranoia among the wider population, has been the wearing of hooded sweatshirts, or hoodies. Of course, hoods on garments of clothing have been worn throughout history, with images of monks in the middle ages wearing hooded cowls coming to mind. Hooded jackets were particularly popularized in the 1970s as part of the hip hop music scene and as a result of being worn by Sylvester Stallone in the Rocky ﬁlms. However, it was not until the 1990s that the term ‘hoodies’ was generally used to describe these garments, when they became associated with emergence of what were termed ‘chavs’, disaffected working-class youths, in this country; and were spread by their use by young skateboarders. And it was not until 2005 that the press and public were referring to ‘hoodie culture’. It is particularly in the UK that hoodies have been regarded and reacted to in such a negative way – exempliﬁed in them being banned from shopping centres such as the Bluewater retail park in Kent. This banning of hoodies and baseball caps 57

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(ofﬁcially stated as ‘wearing clothing that obscures the face – hooded tops, baseball caps – will not be allowed’) brought the hoodie culture into the public arena; and raised the irony of shoppers being prevented from wearing an article that was still on sale in shops within the centre. The move was, though, welcomed by many, including the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, who saw it as an attempt to clamp down on anti-social and threatening behaviour. By contrast, ‘defence’ for the wearing of hoodies came from the leader of the opposition, David Cameron, who suggested the hoodie was not worn as an offensive act. In a speech made in July 2006, which was parodied by the government as the ‘hug a hoodie’ speech, Cameron said: In May last year hoodies became political … The Bluewater shopping centre banned them and the Prime Minister said he backed the ban … But debating the symptoms rather than the cause won’t get us very far. Because the fact is that the hoodie is a response to a problem, not a problem in itself … For young people, hoodies are often more defensive than offensive. They’re a way to stay invisible in the street. In a dangerous environment the best thing to do is keep your head down, blend in, don’t stand out … For some the hoodie represents all that’s wrong about youth culture in Britain today. For me, adult society’s response to the hoodie shows how far we are from the long-term answer to put things right. (BBC News, 10 July 2006) The banning of hoodies from the Bluewater shopping centre in 2005 excited a great deal of media interest and debate. It led to the ‘meaning’ of the hoodie being examined by journalists and academics. As Gareth McLean (2005) pointed out, although only a sweatshirt with a bit extra, the hooded top strikes fear into the heart on most people, ‘a lone ﬁgure behind us on the walk home – hood up, head down – and we quicken our step … a group of hooded teenagers on the street and we’re tensing our shoulders, clenching our ﬁsts’. His article in The Guardian reports the vice-chair of the British Youth Council, Rachel Harrington, as saying that the Bluewater ban ‘demonstrates a growing demonization of young people … and overreacting to any behaviour by young people’. While Angela McRobbie is cited in The Guardian (Ainley 2005) as highlighting the hoodies’ anonymity and air of mystery as explaining its appeal and also the anxiety it produces in others. She goes on to say that: leisurewear and sportswear adopted for everyday wear suggests a distance from the world of ofﬁce (suit) or school (uniform) … (The hooded top) is one in a long line of garments chosen by young people, usually boys, and inscribed with meanings suggesting that they are ‘up to no good’. In the past, such appropriation was usually restricted to membership of speciﬁc youth cultures – leather jackets, bondage trousers – but nowadays it is the norm among young people to ﬂag up their music and cultural preferences in this way, hence the adoption of the hoodie by boys across the boundaries of age, ethnicity and class. 58

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Ainley (2005) makes the point that the moral panic over hoodies is almost a continuation of a previous panic over chavs – working class, white boys who had underachieved in school and who, in the face of a bleak future in terms of respectable employment, turn to anti-social, delinquent behaviour. Of course, we have been here many times before, from the Victorian garotting mentioned earlier, through a variety of (typically) male working-class youth subcultures. And, as before, the rest of society resents and fears such groups; as Ainley puts it, the ‘respectable working middle class live in fear and loathing of the hooded, chav “underclass”’. Indeed, it was this resentment and response that led to the banning of hoodies from the Bluewater centre; and it was a response not just from ‘respectable’ society but from other teenagers: Street rats, says Ainsley, 17. ‘That’s what they’re called.’ ‘They sit on the streets and drink’, explains Lauren, 16 … The teenagers from Bexleyheath describe the disrespectful youths of today as they glide along the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent. Street rats wear hooded tops and baseball caps. (Barkham 2005) The moral panic about hoodies was part of a wider concern about the antisocial behaviour of youths and, as with other panics, the reaction has been criticized by academics and those working in the criminal justice system as excessive. As Shapland (cited in Barkham, 2005) commented, ‘I’m not sure if it’s always a good idea to see youth as a problem … Hooded tops are a problem if you are relying on cameras and policing at a distance rather than face-toface personal security’. While, in a report in The Guardian, Barkham refers to the director of the Crime and Society Foundation thinktank, Richard Garside, suggesting that the government’s drive for respect could amplify perceptions of anti-social youths and to the West Midlands police service complaining that they are being inundated with calls from the public about ‘innocuous anti-social behaviour’. Raising the spectre that society is in danger of creating ‘folk devils’ out of Hoodies, Rod Morgan, Chair of the Youth Justice Board, advises against extreme responses, asking: Would we be wise to exacerbate the problem by making certain forms of dress or behaviour even more attractive by damning them? We have to be careful we don’t demonize them. Having said that, if young people are engaged in serious anti-social behaviour, destroying the quality of life in neighbourhoods, it needs to be dealt with. (Barkham 2005) However, in spite of the differing political comments around the reaction to hoodies, the media reporting of ‘hoodie culture’ has been both hostile and scaremongering, in line with the way the media has responded to other, previous moral panics. Even though at the same time as exciting this hostile reaction, 59

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the hoodie is a widely popular item of clothing that is in the wardrobes of millions of people, and is sold in the millions by ﬁrms such as Nike, Adidas and Gap. As the examples below indicate, recent murder cases have referred to the hoodie in their headlines, irrespective of whether this was a key aspect of the particular crime: Justice for Dad Killed Tackling Hoodies A teenager was facing life in jail last night for shooting dead a young father who stood up to a gang of hoodies. (Daily Express, 28 March 2007) Named: The ‘Hoodie who shot dead Rhys … Rhys was shot dead in a pub car park in Croxteth Park, Liverpool, more than two months ago as he walked home from football practice with two friends. Police believe the hooded gunman was ﬁring at a rival gang but missed and hit innocent Rhys. (Daily Express, 30 October 2007)

QUESTION BREAK In his report on teenage hoodies, Barkham highlights how older people have always commented critically and negatively on the behaviour of youth. And how these older people often forget that they were involved in behaviour that was reacted to and panicked over in similar vein. ‘There isn’t the respect now that there used to be’, says a pensioner, Wendy Wadeson, from leafy Pratt’s Bottom, near Bromley … Her husband Colin says: ‘In the evening when you’re out and there’s a group of youngsters in a dark area it can be threatening’. When asked if they were mods or rockers in their youth, Mr Wadeson responded: ‘Mods, I suppose’ and when asked if he went to Brighton where the mods and rockers clashed: ‘Oh, there were those days. People were drawn into it. It’s easily done’. (Barkham 2005) Why do you think older generations feel that ‘things were better in their day’? From your knowledge of previous and current youth subcultures, do you feel that recent examples of anti-social behaviour from young people are more serious?

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Paedophilia In his discussion of paedophilia as a moral panic, Critcher (2003) makes the point that there are few academic and secondary sources of information on paedophilia and that an examination of newspaper coverage is the clearest way of showing how the panic emerged and developed. He categorizes various phases of this development, even though the term paedophilia was rarely used before the 1990s. First, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the term was introduced in relation to child pornography and the notion of organized paedophile rings. By the later 1980s, he argues that paedophiles became associated with the abduction and murder of children, illustrated by the police investigation ‘operation stranger’ into 14 children who were murdered or missing between 1978 and 1986. The panic surrounding this crime peaked in the 1990s, fuelled by the media coverage of sexual offences against children in Ireland and, later, Belgium. The Irish context involved the publicity over Roman Catholic priests who were accused of sexual offences against children; while a ‘bigger surge in coverage’ concerned the case of the Belgium paedophile, Marc Dutroux. Dutroux was given early release, in 1992, from a thirteen-and-a-half year prison sentence he received in 1989. Subsequently he kidnapped, tortured and sexually abused six girls aged between 8 and 19, four of whom died. He was arrested in 1996 and has been in prison since. This case sparked public outrage in Belgium and led to the tightening of the parole criteria for convicted sex offenders, partly as a result of public pressure – indeed in October 1996 more than 300,000 people dressed in white marched through Brussels, the capital, demanding major reforms of the judicial system. By the late 1990s, the press coverage of paedophilia reached what might be termed moral panic level. Critcher cites 25 headlines referring to child abusers and paedophiles in one month in one newspaper, the Daily Mail. He cites a Daily Mail editorial arguing against the release of paedophiles, asking ‘what kind of law is it that plays Russian roulette with the lives of our children?’ (13 March 1998). By 2000, the coverage of paedophilia in the British press had reached unprecedented levels following the sexual murder of Sarah Payne, an eight-year-old girl who had been missing for two weeks. Photographs and stories about Sarah and her anguished family appeared every day in the media; and following the discovery of her body thousands of people made their way to the ﬁeld to lay wreaths. This murder, in July 2000, encouraged a media-orchestrated outcry, led by the News of the World. The role of the News of the World in promoting the moral panic over paedophiles is worth considering brieﬂy. This paper is part of Rupert Murdoch’s News International corporation and, along with The Sun and other tabloid papers, is a vociferous supporter of and campaigner for hardline measures being taken against criminals. Following the murder of Sarah Payne, it campaigned to force the Labour government to introduce stricter sentences against sex offenders. Using the fact, that, as a result of the 1997 Sex Offenders Act, sex offenders have to register their names and addresses with the police, the News of the World started to publish the names, photographs and approximate whereabouts of 200 individuals on the Sex Offenders Register. Although the police and welfare agencies warned that such a practice might well 61

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endanger children by driving sex offenders into hiding, it continued to publish the list as, it put it, a matter of ‘public concern’. The News of the World claimed that there were thousands of paedophiles preying on young children and was joined by other papers demanding action against paedophiles. As a front page article in the Daily Mirror put it, ‘Hanging these bastards really is too good for them’. The panic orchestrated by the British press, encouraged an atmosphere that sparked a series of brutal attacks on suspected paedophiles. The violence and lynch mob atmosphere on the Paulsgrove housing estate in Portsmouth led to prolonged rioting and innocent families being forced out of their homes and into hiding. Elsewhere in the country, a number of people were wrongly identiﬁed as sex offenders and subjected to arson attacks on their homes. And, rather than condemning the News of the World, the government, aware of the panic and mood of the general population, organized compromise meetings with the paper, relatives of Sarah Payne and children’s agencies. As Hyland (2000) argues, even though sex abuse is a matter of great concern, ‘this does not legitimize the hysteria over predatory paedophiles being whipped up by the media … all this has accomplished is to induce panic and fear amongst many parents’. (The question break below considers the News of the World ’s ‘name and shame’ campaign). In a detailed study of the ‘Paulsgrove riot’, Williams and Thompson (2004) highlighted a number of problems and inaccuracies with the media accounts of it. After a year-long ethnographic study, they found that the Paulsgrove ‘riots’ were not provoked by the News of theWorld ’s campaign. The residents of the estate had planned a peaceful demonstration to express concerns about Victor Burnett, an offender who had been exposed by the News of the World and whom residents had previously complained about. It was the failure of the authorities to act upon these complaints that led to a peaceful demonstration against the local Housing Department. Williams and Thompson concluded that: While some of the marches saw clashes with the police; what is important … is to note that the demonstrators were neither out to cause personal injury or damage property, as was commonly alleged; and they were not vigilantes. Contrary to what the press assert … no one, paedophiles or ‘innocent’ residents, was personally attacked. There was evidence that some teenagers did throw stones at some houses, but there was no planned attack on anyone, paedophile or otherwise. And no one was arrested, charged or convicted of such an act either.

QUESTION BREAK The following extracts refer to the News of the World ’s campaign in 2000 to ‘name and shame’ paedophiles in response to the murder of Sarah Payne; and

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subsequent ‘naming and shaming’ in The Sun. Read them before considering the questions below. In response to the murder of Sarah Payne, the News of the World ‘named and shamed’ scores of people it said were guilty of sex offences against children … ‘If you are a parent you must read this’, said Sunday’s News of the World. The tabloid newspaper went on to publish the names and photographs of dozens of people it said had perpetrated sex attacks on children. Some 88% of us want parents to be told when a convicted paedophile moves in to their area, says a poll commissioned by the paper. Since September 1997, moves have been made to monitor the whereabouts of convicted sex offenders. However, the information is restricted to the appropriate police force, the probation service and the local MP. Under the Sex Offenders Act, those found guilty of crimes such as rape are obliged to report their name and address to a local police station within 14 days of their conviction or release from custody … Anyone failing to register risks a six-month prison term or a £5,000 ﬁne. The register contains some 12,000 names; a compliance rate of 97% says Tony Butler, of the Association of Chief Police Ofﬁcers … Some 250,000 Britons have been convicted of a sexual offence – 110,000 have targeted children. However, those convicted or released before 1997 are not compelled to join the register. Nor are those given conditional discharges for more minor sexual offences, such as the possession of child pornography. Pressure groups, such as End Child Prostitution, Pornography and Trafﬁcking (Ecpat), also complain that the register fails to include Britons convicted of sex crimes abroad. Also, names on the register are not shared with foreign authorities if the offender decides to leave the country, says Helen Veitch of Ecpat. ‘The monitoring process falls down when the offender goes overseas …’ Despite its plans to tighten controls, the government remains adamant that it will not follow the American lead, and give the public access to its register … However, American courts are concerned leaks of the names, addresses and car registration numbers are all too common … Naming and shaming can also tar the innocent. The Daily Mail reports a Manchester man was wrongly targeted by a mob following the News of the World campaign. With many paedophiles targeting children within their own family, public notiﬁcation may also stop many victims from seeking a conviction in the ﬁrst place, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. ‘One reason attacks are not reported is the shame’. Perhaps not the ‘shame’ the News of the World was hoping to produce. (BBC News, Monday 24 July 2000 – www.news.bbc.co.uk) Executives of the News of the World have agreed to meet police and probation chiefs who have led criticism of its campaign to publish the names and photographs of paedophiles. The newspaper denied it was giving ground last

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night and issued a robust statement saying that it would give an audience to its critics tomorrow but if necessary restate the objectives of its campaign. However, an article published in yesterday’s News of the World acknowledged that police chiefs and others had ‘valid reasons’ for opposing the publication of paedophiles’ names and addresses in newspapers and said their expert opinion would be listened to. Ahead of the meeting, requested by Tony Butler, Chief Constable of Gloucester and the police chiefs’ spokesman on child protection, probation ofﬁcers led a fresh attack on the newspaper by accusing it of driving sex offenders underground. The Association of Chief Probation ofﬁcers (Acop) wrote a letter of complaint, copied to the Press Complaints Commission, claiming the ‘naming and shaming’ of sex offenders was hindering work to supervise offenders by driving them underground. The tactic also risked identifying innocent relatives of offenders and encouraged violence, Acop said … The National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders (Nacro) backed up the accusation by saying driving paedophiles underground was counter-productive and actually heightened the risk that they would re-offend … Ministers also appealed to the newspaper to heed police warnings that it was better that sex offenders remained at registered addresses where they could be monitored by ofﬁcers. Chris Smith, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, said he was ‘very worried’ by the public naming of paedophiles although he recognized it was done with the ‘noble motive’ of protecting children … Paul Boateng, a Home Ofﬁcer Minister, also warned against creating a ‘climate of fear’ and emphasized the need to avoid ‘panic and hysteria.’ (The Independent, 31 July 2000) The Sun has been forced to make an embarrassing apology after naming and shaming the wrong man as a sex offender. Owing to a mix up by a picture agency, the tabloid mistakenly used a photograph of David Gazley in place of a picture of Christopher Harris, who has been banned from going near children for life after groping young girls in Great Yarmouth. An apology to Mr Gazley – whose portrait appeared in Saturday’s Sun above the headline ‘Face of kid ban pervert’ – is published in the tabloid today. ‘We sincerely apologise to Mr Gazley for the hurt and embarrassment caused by our report’, said the newspaper. RebekahWade, who replaced David Yelland as editor of The Sun in January, pioneered a ‘name and shame’ campaign against convicted sex offenders when she was editor of the tabloid’s Sunday stable mate, the News of the World. The campaign fought under the banner ‘Sarah’s Law’, following the murder of eight-year-old Sarah Payne, aimed to name all 110,000 sex offenders in Britain in a bid to change the law to give public access to the sex offenders register. However, critics said Wade’s campaign was responsible for inciting mob violence and forcing paedophiles to go into hiding. (The Guardian, 31 March 2003)

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QUESTIONS List the arguments for and against the media publicizing the names and personal details of convicted sex offenders. (Try to think of beneﬁcial and negative effects for the victims and the wider public.) What dangers with the over publicizing of crimes and criminals are indicated by the extracts? Can you think of any others? Critcher (2003) ﬁnishes his account by considering whether the notion of moral panic can be applied to paedophilia, in particular given the prolonged nature of the panic. Certainly paedophilia does meet all the major aspects and criterion of a moral panic – there are identiﬁable ‘folk devils’; there is widespread agreement, and strong emotional passions, among the public, media and politicians about the extent and danger of such behaviour. However, the focus on the ‘folk devil’ paedophile as a stranger who preys on children does not present an accurate picture of the variable nature of sexual offenders. Although ‘stranger danger’ seems to be the biggest worry for parents, and while it is this aspect of sexual offending that excites media and public opinion, it is well established that it is abuse within the family, or by an adult who is trusted by the child, that is the most common form of sexual abuse and offending. The numbers of children abducted and killed in Britain by a stranger have remained at between ﬁve and ten annually for many years, with a very small percentage of sex offenders falling into the category of predatory paedophiles. As Critcher points out, the paedophile label contributes little to our understanding of the frequency or nature of sexual abuse, ‘moral panics distort our capacity for understanding, even when they appear to recognize a genuine problem’. In a recent study that highlights the difﬁculties with categorizing and applying taxonomies to popular fears, Cavanagh (2007) looks at the panic around internet paedophilia. As we have seen, a demonized group or individual (the folk devil) is a central aspect of the phenomenon of a moral panic, and the scapegoating of those people involved acts to reafﬁrm the communal boundaries of the wider group or society. In applying this to internet paedophilia, Cavanagh recognizes that there is a recognizable folk devil in the form of a ‘shadowy paedophile lurking in the chatroom to seduce the unwary’; there are also various other ‘candidates for blame’. For instance, there are the internet service providers and the issue of whether commercial bodies should share some responsibility for regulating what is available on the internet. And should the state and other institutions be blamed for failing to police the problem? As internet paedophilia, and paedophilia in general, became more widely reported and panicked about, there emerged moral entrepreneurs who aimed to channel public support against the folk devils. Groups such as Internet watch and child welfare organizations, along with more traditional moral entrepreneurs such as the churches, emerged alongside technical experts as spokespeople against the new threat. Indeed, fears about the speciﬁc illegal materials provided on the internet merged with fears of 65

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the internet in general as an invasive and addictive media (see Chapter 7 for a fuller discussion of cyber crime).

REVISITING THE NOTION OF MORAL PANICS In this chapter we have considered a range of behaviours and reactions to them under the broad term of moral panics; and there are many more examples that we might have looked at. In doing this, we have used the notion of moral panic very broadly and in concluding it would be useful to say something about the term. At the start of the chapter we said that moral panic is a well-established term; however that does not mean it is a clear cut one. In a recent paper on the panic surrounding paedophilia and the internet, Cavanagh (2007) makes the point that ‘applying taxonomies to popular fears’ is a task fraught with difﬁculty. Indeed, the term has been used so indiscriminately by the media that it has become almost ‘a term of abuse to refer to the activities of journalists … so the idea of a moral panic is elaborated as an elaborate media scam, a deliberate attempt to “spin” social problems’. What Cavanagh is suggesting is that the moral panic has become a regular aspect of media reporting of anti-social and criminal behaviour, so that ‘moral panics are a direct product of the mundane practices of journalists’. The essential point here is that public anxieties and concerns are only able to take on a public form through the media. Nonetheless, there are key elements apparent in any moral panic. As Cavanagh (2007) puts it, the moral panic reﬂects social anxieties and concerns about behaviour that is seen as some sort of moral threat. The concerns are then exaggerated in regard to both scale and frequency, they are symbolized in terms of them being a threat to traditional values and are emphasized by groups of ‘moral entrepreneurs’ who reframe the particular problem in terms of the solutions that they favour. And it is important to be aware that moral panics are not myths but are the result of actual behaviour and real events. So the analysis of moral panics, ‘is focused on the observation of distortion and exaggeration in presentation of this factual problem’. The idea of a moral panic is based on their being a disproportionate reaction to the particular behaviour and event(s), as Goode and Ben-Yehuda (1994) comment, ‘the concept of moral panic rests on disproportionality’. In this chapter the various examples we have considered certainly all ﬁt this description.

FURTHER READING Cohen S. (1980) Folk Devils and Moral Panics, 2nd edn, London: Routledge. We have referred extensively to Stan Cohen’s class study in this chapter but there is nothing like reading the original. Critcher C. (2003) Moral Panics and the Media, Milton Keynes: Open University Press. This study critically evaluates the usefulness of moral panics models and the role of the media in creating such panics. It examines a number of case studies, including child abuse, paedophilia, video nasties and AIDS. 66

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Goode E., and Ben-Yehuda N. (1994) Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance, Oxford: Blackwell. This work acknowledges the importance of Cohen’s work and discusses a number of different theoretical explanations for moral panics. Young J. (1971) The Role of the Police as Ampliﬁers of Deviancy, in Cohen S. (ed.), Images of Deviance, Harmondsworth: Penguin. This study of drug use in 1960s London looks at the role of the police in fuelling a moral panic.

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CHAPTER 4 ❚ The media, age and criminals ❚ The media, gender and criminals

The Media Portrayal of Criminals

❚ The male gaze ❚ Intimate partner killings and victim blaming ❚ Sexuality ❚ Fictional representations ❚ The media, ethnicity and criminals ❚ The media, criminals and ‘criminal communities’ ❚ The media, class and criminals

Explanations and theories of criminal behaviour are as old as the types of behaviour themselves – debate and discussion about why people break laws have excited public interest throughout history; and most people hold their own views as to what causes such behaviour. And these views probably all contain elements of truth even without being complete explanations – so inherited defects, overcrowding and poverty, getting in with the ‘wrong’ crowd and poor parental supervision, have all been seen as causes of criminal behaviour. Given the massive interest in crime and criminals, and the wide range of behaviour that the term crime encompasses, it is not surprising that a wide and diverse range of theoretical explanations have been put forward; and from a number of different academic disciplines, including biology, psychology, sociology and philosophy. Early theorists and researchers tended to try to identify biological and psychological causes of criminal behaviour – arguing that certain individuals are predisposed to such behaviour because of their genetic make-up. Particular criminal individuals were seen as having either inherited or developed speciﬁc characteristics that encouraged such behaviour. More recently, sociologically based theoretical explanations have focused on the social context in which crime occurs and have argued that crime and criminals can only be fully understood in relation to the social structure, to speciﬁc social conditions and processes. Theoretical explanations see the criminal as someone who is biologically, psychologically or

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socially different – even if their ‘difference’ is only by virtue of the fact that they have been caught and labelled by the criminal justice system as criminal. Before looking at how the media has portrayed criminals, the question break below asks you to consider your views of the criminal.

QUESTION BREAK Although early theories suggesting that some people were born criminal have been rejected by more recent theorizing, the notion that there is a ‘criminal type’ is still widely held. What do you consider to be the sort of characteristics that form the common perception of the ‘criminal type’? (Think of both individual and social characteristics.) Look at the list below. If you had to picture the typical criminal how would it ﬁt each of the headings below? • • • • •

Social class Gender Ethnicity Age Location

Although we cannot predict the answers you might have given to the question above, it is fair guess to assume that most people’s picture of a ‘typical criminal’ would not be a middle class, old, white woman living in a small rural village. In this chapter, we will move away from the media portrayal of crime and look at how criminals (or more speciﬁcally those most often convicted of criminal behaviour) are represented. We will consider how the different categories of criminal are shown and reported by the media. In particular, the chapter will consider: • • •

•

the role that age plays in the portrayal of criminals; and changes over time in the way the media have reported on young offenders. the role that gender plays in the portrayal of criminals – how are women criminals shown and what are the main differences within the portrayal of women criminals? the role that ethnicity plays in the portrayal of criminals – how are black offenders shown compared to white and Asian offenders? and what about other ethnic minorities, such as Eastern Europeans? the role of location – how different communities are portrayed by the media as being ‘safe’ or crime ridden. As well as different geographical communities, we will also look at ‘virtual communities’ such as internet chatrooms and email groups. 69

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•

the role that class plays in the portrayal of criminals – comparing middle and upper class criminals, including corporate criminals, with working/under class criminals.

The chapter will also consider the extent to which these areas overlap – for instance, the degree to which young, male, Black, working-class people living in rundown communities particularly are prone to negative reporting and portrayal across the media.

THE MEDIA, AGE AND CRIMINALS In this section, we will consider the ways in which the age of criminals inﬂuences media representations. Given that crime is strongly linked with age, and young people are much more likely to be convicted of crimes than other age groups, the focus will be on how young offenders, both children and youths, are portrayed. In particular, we will look at whether differences in media portrayals of criminals, and the degree of ‘sympathy’ for them, varies according to age – for instance, are younger offenders (and perhaps elderly offenders too) portrayed in a different manner to adult offenders? Arguably age is, on the face of it, more signiﬁcant in terms of the media portrayal of victims of crime (see Chapter 5, pp. 103–105) – those victims who are seen as perhaps less able to look after themselves tend to gain greater sympathy from the public and the media than other categories of victims. So attacks on children and old people, especially old women, receive a good deal of media publicity; this emphasizes their (relatively) defenceless state and makes crime against them seem even more horriﬁc. Here, though, we are examining the media representation of criminals and, as such, there are not the same issues of vulnerability and defencelessness, so this representation is liable to be less sympathetic. As mentioned, the focus of this section will be on the media and young offenders; however, we will look brieﬂy at the way elderly criminals are portrayed and if criminals who are considered to be old are shown in a different light to others. As regards youthful offenders, it seems that once an offender is classiﬁed as an adult then age is a factor which has little inﬂuence on how the media describes him or her – in other words, whether a criminal is 22 or 52, for instance, is not likely to be major issue for which the media to base their coverage around. With regard to the media portrayal of criminals in relation to youth, we need to start by considering at what ages young criminals are portrayed differently to others. To some extent, this relates to the legal and justice systems, which treat young offenders separately to older ones – in this country, we have separate youth courts and custodial institutions for young offenders. In England and Wales, for children the age of criminal responsibility is ten and children below that age cannot be found guilty of a criminal offence. From ten to 18, young offenders are dealt with in separate, youth courts which are less formal in style than adult courts (and they are not open to the public as with adult courts). As Newburn (2007) puts it, ‘this system reﬂects, in crude terms, the distinctions made between three life stages: childhood, adolescence and adulthood’. 70

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It is not necessary to go into the development of our juvenile justice system in detail here, but some of the changes and developments have been inﬂuenced, at the very least, by public and media concern over youth offending. The notion of separating young offenders from adult offenders did not emerge until the mid-nineteenth century and the Young Offenders Act of 1854, which established reformatories for children between 7 and 14 who had been convicted of vagrancy. Juvenile courts were formalized by the 1908 Children Act and Borstals for offenders between the ages of 16 and 21 were set up at the same time. During the later half of the nineteenth century, issues of child welfare came to the fore and the Children and Young Persons Act of 1969 emphasized the welfare and care requirements of young offenders rather than punishment. In his review of youth crime and youth justice, Newburn (2007) highlights a shift away from a welfare-based to a more punitive approach to juvenile offending in the 1990s; a shift that is illustrated by the media portrayal of crimes committed by young offenders. There were regular media storylines in the early 1990s over joyriding, ‘certainly the press was full of stories of young people stealing cars and then using them for spectacular … shows of bravado’, and over youngsters who were offending so regularly that they were dubbed ‘one-boy crime waves’ in the popular press (that being a headline used by the Daily Mail, 10 September 1992). This concern reached almost fever-pitch levels in 1993 after the abduction from Bootle shopping centre, Liverpool and subsequent murder of two-year-old Jamie Bulger. The abduction of Bulger by two young boys was captured on CCTV and shown on national television, with the subsequent arrest, charging and (later that year) conviction of two 10-year-old boys encouraging a media-led panic about young offenders (the Bulger murder and the media reaction to it is examined in more detail in Chapter 2 p. 23). Newburn (2007) notes that in the days after the trial of Thompson and Venables in November 1993, there was massive and extremely hostile media coverage – the Daily Mail had almost 40 stories in the three days after the trial and The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph had 22 and 23 stories respectively. Jewkes (2004) sees the Bulger case as providing a watershed in relation to youthful offenders and criminal justice. Thomson and Venables were tried in an adult court and the case led to a massive expansion in the use of CCTV cameras in the UK (see p. 122). It also highlighted the issue of childhood – and how the signiﬁcance, and even existence, of childhood has varied throughout history. Jewkes points out that ‘by and large, childhood has been seen as fundamentally separate from adulthood, and children regarded as requiring nurture and protection’. As we have seen, media reporting of the conviction of Thomson and Venables emphasized the themes of childhood horror and evil rather than childhood innocence; and is seen by Jewkes as ‘the apex of a wave of hysteria that, in the early 1990s, incorporated joyriders, truants, drug users, burglars, gang members and, memorably, “Ratboy”, a child of 14 with a string of offences to his name who had absconded from local authority care and was reportedly living in a sewer’. Since the Labour government came to power in 1997, there have been an array of new initiatives relating to youth crime, including Youth Offending Teams, and in response to growing public and media concern over anti-social behaviour, ASBOs (Anti-Social Behaviour Orders). 71

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QUESTION BREAK Portrayal of young people by the media Read the following comments and consider the questions below: I think the media has created a moral panic where they see young people as criminals wearing hoodies, going round attacking people and are always on the street … I think the media doesn’t show enough the achievements of young people. (Comment on BBC News, School Report, 28 June 2007 – www.news.bbc.co.uk) Media focus on youth drug addiction, vandalism, unprotected sex, as well as many other ‘negative’ issues, has led some people to view young people in terms of stereotypes and gross generalizations … Negative media stereotypes can also inﬂuence young people themselves – a kind of selffulﬁlling prophecy. On a broader level, young people can be discriminated against or treated suspiciously because of stereotypes. (www.actnow.com.au)

QUESTIONS What are the typical words that people would use to describe young people today? Are they generally negative or positive? Can you think of examples of how negative media stereotypes have inﬂuenced people you know? To what extent do you think the above, fairly typical, comments are fair?

It is well established that young people are more likely to be convicted of criminal offences than older people. Data on youthful offending shows that at least one-ﬁfth of all those cautioned or convicted in any year are aged between 10 and 17 and over one-third are aged under 21; and estimates of the peak age for offending place it at between 15 and 18, with it being slightly higher for males than females (MORI 2004, in Newburn 2007). Because of this high rate of offending it is perhaps not surprising that young people and youth have been seen as a social problem in Britain and elsewhere for many years. The fact that young people have been and still are a focus of adult concern is indicated by the terminology applied to young offenders – juvenile delinquents and, more 72

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recently, anti-social behaviour are terms that have been applied almost exclusively to younger offenders. The media have played a crucial role in the construction of ‘problem youth’ and, following the work of Brown (2005), we will consider the ways in which the media have been involved in the ‘packaging and repackaging of problem youth’. In his study of the history of youth crime, Pearson (1983) gives numerous examples of the negative media reporting of youth and youth crime in particular (in Chapter 1 we looked at Pearson’s argument that youthful crime had existed over hundreds of years). More recently, the notion of ‘moral panics’ developed from Cohen’s work in the early 1970s highlighted the key role of the media in inﬂuencing the wider public’s (negative) perception of youth and youth crime (in Chapter 3 we considered moral panics and how delinquent youthful behaviour and youth subcultures burst on to the public and media consciousness in the 1950s and 1960s). Studies of moral panics were initially focused on speciﬁc and discreet groups, who became seen as ‘folk devils’. However, the Marxist-inﬂuenced work of Hall and colleagues in Policing the Crisis (1978) expanded the scope of moral panics to represent youth more generally (see p. 50). Brown argues that in the 1980s there was a move away from the media portrayal of youth as a problem. This was the era of the ‘yuppies’ (young urban professionals); ‘ “problem youth” in the media vied with images of “kids in the city”’ (Brown 2005). However, with the rise in youth unemployment in the 1980s, by the later years of that decade and into the 1990s, the emphasis soon changed to seeing youth as a problem – as indicated by the sub-heading Brown used in her review of media representation of problem youth, ‘A total panic? The media and young people in the 1990s’. Young people without jobs, involved in delinquency and drug taking, were high on the media agenda. And the decreasing age of young people involved in problem and criminal behaviour attracted media and public concern – a trend highlighted in the joyriding stories of the early 1990s and culminating in massive publicity surrounding the murder of Jamie Bulger by two 10-year-old boys in 1993 (see p. 70 above). In looking at the media representation of offenders in relation to age, the focus has been on young offenders. In ﬁnishing this section, we will brieﬂy consider how elderly offenders are portrayed – and whether there is a more sympathetic approach to law breakers who are seen as old. Firstly, the media portrayal of elderly criminals has to be seen in the context of the increasing numbers of such offenders. Although there are many more offenders than prisoners, prison statistics can help illustrate trends in data on offenders. In the decade 1995 to 2005, the number of sentenced prisoners aged 60 and over in England and Wales rose by 169%; and by March 2007 there were 2,080 such prisoners, including 1,036 over the age of 65 and more than 200 over the age of 70 (James 2007). There is a similar trend in the USA, with around 43,000 men over 55 years old in prison (US Department of Justice 1997). As regards offenders in general, in 2005 in England and Wales, 6% of all 17-year-old males were found guilty of, or cautioned for, indictable offences (the highest rate for any age group) compared to less than 1% of men in each age group over the age of 43 (Social Trends 2007). Of course, this increase in elderly offenders is not unexpected given the general ageing of the population – for instance, in 1950, 73

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8.5% of the population of the USA was aged 65 or over, and it is estimated that the ﬁgure will be 15.5% by the year 2020. In the UK the picture is similar; in 1971, 13% of the population were aged 65 and over, by 2005 this ﬁgure had risen to 16%. In terms of the sort of offences committed, elderly offenders cannot be seen as a homogenous group. The habitual criminal, for whom prison is an accustomed experience, differs from the person who is ﬁrst arrested when aged 60 or over – and some prisoners grow old due to serving long sentences. In their research into older prisoners, Collins and Bird (2006) found that theft and handling stolen goods (31%), followed by sexual offences (21%), were the commonest reasons for custodial sentences for older offenders; they also highlighted some unexpected trends, including drug trafﬁcking by older females. These increases in elderly offenders and, particularly, prisoners, have raised concerns about the needs of such criminals. Collins and Bird (2006) refer to a study of 203 prisoners over the age of 60, which found that 10% were ‘functionally disabled in activities of daily living, and most of them were unable to climb stairs’. In a report for The Prison Reform Trust, ‘Old Inside’, Sampson (2007) points out that the number of elderly prisoners will continue to increase due to the ageing of the population, trends in sentencing and better crime detection; and considers the problems of an ageing prison population. First, he highlights the problems for prisons themselves – there are no care assistants or the like in prisons and health and mental problems of elderly prisoners do not sit easily with running a disciplined regime. He refers to a review by the Prison Inspectorate that referred to prisoners not getting exercise as they could not get to the exercise yard and not washing because they could not stand unaided in the showers. Second, as regards problems for individual prisoners, he raises the question of how can prisoners reconcile themselves to the reality of growing old and dying behind bars; and how do they cope with major illnesses such as strokes when they are lying in a prison bed, with no relatives to care for them. Although older prisoners make up the fastest growing sector of the prison population, the prison service has no special measures in place to meet their particular needs. Of course, some may feel little sympathy for people who have committed serious enough offences to warrant a prison sentence; however, there are clearly some elderly prisoners who are not a threat to the community, who do not need bars on their windows as they cannot even walk unaided. In terms of media coverage, headlines are often made when old people, with a non-criminal past, are found guilty and jailed for making a stand against the law – such as refusing to pay council tax bills. In such cases, the media seems to support and sympathize with the offender because of his or her (old) age. For instance, there was a good deal of media support for council tax protester, Sylvia Hardy, aged 73, who was jailed for seven days in 2005 for owing council tax arrears of £53.71. Indeed, the media coverage led to a mystery donor paying the ﬁne and her being released from prison after two days. Mrs Hardy had refused to pay her bill, claiming that her pension could not keep up with the rises in council tax. A similar, recent case of an elderly woman being imprisoned for refusing to pay her council tax is mentioned in the question break below. 74

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QUESTION BREAK Look at the two media reports below – one from The Daily Telegraph on the jailing of a 69-year-old woman for non-payment of her council tax, and the other a report from the Australian news network, ABC, on a serious crime committed by elderly offenders. Miss Josephine Rooney, 69, of Derby, who has been jailed this week for nonpayment of council tax … Here’s what happened. Miss Rooney’s street was once thought to be a lovely place, the kind of street where people knew their neighbours and everybody was safe. Two years ago, it became clear that something was wrong. Locals now referred to the same street as Crack Alley and a clean-up effort discovered 1,100 dirty needles in a single day. Miss Rooney was sick of the decline in her street and dismayed at the council’s apparent unwillingness to do anything about it, so she refused to pay almost £800 in council tax, a decision that has led to her being imprisoned. What a disgrace … What a slur on the democratic instincts of a good citizen, and what pathetic, craven adherence to the rule of law, even when confronted with the arguments of a person who is clearly in the right. Miss Rooney should become a hero to everyone who has ever been confronted by the intransigence and boneheadedness of a local council … Miss Rooney’s street, like so many in Britain, has been over-run by people fuelled by a mad sense of entitlement, by a vast carelessness and selﬁshness, and violence on their minds … But my tolerance of the yobs has run out. Far from being a socialist cause, they are more like representatives of the extreme right. That is why I think the efforts of Miss Rooney are the opposite of criminal: her community spirit is such as any of us might follow. You won’t be surprised to hear that this Government - ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’ – saw ﬁt to champion the same Miss Rooney not long ago. As part of its Respect Campaign, it gave her a Taking Stand award. Now that same old-age pensioner is languishing in jail because her council could not bear the stand she was taking, and couldn’t ﬁnd a way to listen to her and tackle the problems in her street … (From: O’Hagan A., ‘Josephine Rooney Deserves A(nother) Medal, Daily Telegraph, 28 June 2006, www.telegraph.co.uk) An elderly couple in Perth have been declared Australia’s oldest drug trafﬁckers and, as a result, they’re set to lose all of their assets, including their house. 81-year-old David Davies and 77-year-old Florence Davies were convicted earlier this month of two counts of possession of cannabis with the intention to supply. They were both given suspended jail sentences,

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but today’s announcement by the Director of Public Prosecutions could leave them with nothing. The DPP’s ofﬁce says the case is tragic, but in the end, there was no choice and the conﬁscation has to go ahead. David Weber reports … The Davies’ home was raided in 2002. Nearly 19 kilograms of cannabis was found hidden in a false ceiling. Another 300 grams was found in an ice-cream container under the bed. And more than $7000 was found in the car. Police estimated the drug haul to be worth more than $260,000. But while there was a maximum sentence of 10 years or a $100,000 ﬁne, the judge said the elderly pair had led an otherwise blameless life, and he gave them short, suspended sentences. That was 10 days ago. Today, the Davies situation took a dramatic turn for the worse. The DPP’s Director of Legal Services, Fiona Low, says efforts are now underway to take ownership of the Davies’ property. Fiona Law: ‘There may be some mitigating factors in terms of the process after the formal vesting. Yes, I mean age, health, are relevant considerations. However, what I think people need to remind themselves of is that this was a conviction for a large quantity of trafﬁckable drugs and a jury found them guilty … The purpose of the legislation is to act as a deterrent. Anyone involved in trafﬁcking drugs will be dealt with harshly … the trafﬁcking of drugs is something that the community demands be attended to’. (ABC News Network, 18 June 2004, www.abc.net.au)

QUESTIONS What part does the age of the offenders play in the content and style of the two extracts? Do you think the crimes would have been reported differently if the offenders had not been so old? Can you think of other examples of elderly offenders being portrayed with more sympathy by the media?

THE MEDIA, GENDER AND CRIMINALS As well as there being a strong link between age and crime, there is also a strong relationship between gender and crime. The stereotypical picture of the criminal is of a young male and the statistics back this picture up. Men have done and continue to commit the vast majority of crime (or at least recorded crime) – in general terms roughly 80% of those convicted for serious offences in England and Wales are male. Perhaps the most startling differences are revealed in prison population ﬁgures – in April 2008, of 82,105 prisoners in England and Wales, 76

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4,430 were women (so that under 5.5% of prisoners are female). In this section, we will look at how gender inﬂuences the way the media represent crime, in particular we will examine the media portrayal of female criminals. In this relatively brief discussion, our focus will be on how the media report violent women offenders, and particularly women found guilty of murder. Murder is the most serious of crimes and if crime is typically seen as a male preserve, then focusing on the media coverage of women murderers will provide an interesting angle on the media’s representation of criminals. Tuchman (1978) argued that media discourses regarding women are guilty of ‘symbolic annihilation’, that is, the media ignore, trivialize or condemn women. In particular, this aspect of the media has an effect on the way that news about offending women is reported. We have highlighted the fact that men still commit the majority of crime, however about one-third of violent crime stories in the media are about female offenders. This raises the question as to why the media seem to be more interested in female offenders than males. Views of and explanations for women and their involvement or lack of involvement in crime have ranged from exploring the inherently different natures of men and women to focusing on the socially constructed gender roles that inﬂuence men’s and women’s lives. And there has often been (and still continues to be) a widely held acceptance of ‘common sense’ assumptions of female behaviour. From an essentialist (naturalistic) point of view females have a different countenance to men. This naturalistic explanation renders anything that deviates from the female norm as ‘unnatural’. The acceptable female norm is closely linked to female biology. For example, women are seen to be closer to nature as they give birth and are subject to the menstrual cycle. It is widely assumed then that women are naturally caring, emotional and maternal. This view of women has been criticized by many as assuming that what is natural is morally right and desirable. But, even more important, especially to feminist thinkers, is the view that these attributes are accepted as natural and not socially constructed and, importantly, that this ‘evolutionary’ explanation naturalizes and justiﬁes the continuation of sexist attitudes to and perceptions of female criminals. In recent years, the media have helped in the formation of strong biological interpretations of female behaviour, which have found their way into explanations for female criminality, for example premenstrual syndrome (PMS), battered women syndrome, post-natal depression, and infanticide. This has resulted in more sympathetic treatment by the media and the criminal justice system as it denotes a form of diminished responsibility. As an example of this, PMS has been used successfully in courts as a mitigation for crimes varying from shoplifting to murder. A famous case was that of R. v Craddock in 1980 and R. v Smith in1981 (Craddock and Smith being the same person). Craddock was working as a barmaid and killed a co-worker. In court it was successfully argued that she suffered from acute PMS and this was accepted by the judge as a mitigating factor and probation and medical treatment were recommended. The following year Craddock (now Smith) attempted suicide and threatened to kill a police ofﬁcer; again the judge accepted PMS as a mitigating factor. Since those cases, PMS has continued to be used as a mitigating factor in the British court system. 77

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However, by rooting offending women behaviour within biological and psychological explanations, we are in danger of creating an over-simplistic view of female criminality. Interpretations of female criminality which have focused on biological and psychological differences between men and women have also been used to explain women’s relative lack of involvement in crime. However, sociological and feministbased explanations emphasize the social construction of gender identity and how this inﬂuences behaviour, including criminal behaviour. So, for instance, girls and women have less opportunities for crime as girls tend to be more constrained and regulated by their families when growing up. Common sense assumptions about gender roles and the ‘appropriate’ behaviour for men and women are reﬂected in the way the media report crime and criminals and their use of these stereotypical views of women. The language or discourse used by the media is a key factor here. Discourse is an important concept when discussing the media portrayal of the female offender. Indeed, Foucault argued that, ‘Social control depends on language. Discourses of sexuality, sanity and criminality are transformed into a technology of power formulated in terms of the law’ (1978, p. 87). The narrative within the media is in essence a form of story telling. Within news media, items are often referred to as ‘stories’. This is most apparent within newspapers and TV crime news in which journalists construct news stories that can be evaluated easily by the audience. News and the selling of newspapers then is reliant on a number of ‘stock stories’ that follow a well-established path. Ericson, Baranek and Chan (1991) go as far as to argue that, even when new evidence or proﬁles present themselves, journalists are reluctant to change their stories’ direction; this seems to be particularly true of female offenders and is evidenced in the accounts of female murders that we look at below. The idea of the stock story within mainstream journalistic portrayals of female offenders has been much documented during the last 20 years. Often these stock stories come in the form of binary classiﬁcations steeped in gothic storytelling, for example, the virgin or vamp (see Benedict 1992). On the one hand is the Lady Macbeth ﬁgure (the unnatural monster and manipulator) or the Pygmalion; on the other hand is the dupe, the woman who is willing to do anything for love and resorts to killing as a way of cementing her relationship with a man (see Cameron and Fraser 1987). Other narratives focus on appearance and contrast the ugly duckling with the femme fatale. Finally are those stories that focus on women’s biology and psychology and emphasize the mad and the bad, which gives recourse to the so-called link between femininity and madness and evil (see Frigon 1995). Bronwyn Naylor (2001) examined the reporting of violence in the British print media and found signiﬁcant differences in the intensity and nature or the reporting of violent male and female offenders. Again, narratives used in female accounts pointed to the emotional and irrational nature of female crime, whilst male violence was presented as ‘normal’ and ‘natural’.

THE MALE GAZE The concept of the ‘male gaze’ was ﬁrst introduced in media studies by Laura Mulvey in the 1970s to describe how the audience is forced to view women through the 78

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eyes of the heterosexual man (Mulrey, 1975). Although ﬁrst used in ﬁlm theory, the concept is often applied to other kinds of media, for example, advertising and journalism. The male gaze points to the fact that the image of females within the media are framed for the beneﬁt of the ‘male’, therefore images stress the importance of physical attractiveness. As we see later, this idea can be seen in the way that, when female offenders are portrayed, the offender’s physical appearance, rather than the offence itself, often become the focus of attention. In their book Media and Body Image, Wykes and Gunter (2004) argue that the media is guilty of socially constructing femininity. Powerful messages that are unrealistic yet persuasive are used within the media to encourage women to ﬁt the feminine stereotype. For example, women are encouraged and expected to be forever slim, youthful, feminine and heterosexual. In terms of female offenders, their appearance, unlike their male counterpart, is subject to intense scrutiny. Physical appearance becomes an important aspect in the reporting of female offenders. Rather than the offence being described, the female offender becomes the central focus. The male gaze becomes an important tool when analysing the content of newspaper articles. Most reports of female offenders are dichotomized into those who ﬁt the male gaze, those who are physically attractive and those who are the opposite and physically unattractive. This dichotomy is popularly reﬂected in the contrasting images of the ugly duckling and the femme fatale. In the rest of this section, we will look at how the media have represented some of the most well-known female criminals of recent years; and as we mentioned at the start our discussion will focus on women murderers. Below are examples of three (in)famous female killers and the iconic images that often accompany media reporting of them. We will brieﬂy consider these cases in relation to media reporting and the male gaze. Karla Homolka In 1993, Karla Homolka was convicted of manslaughter in the rape and murder of two teenage girls and for the drugging and rape of her younger sister Tammy. Her accomplice, husband Paul Bernado, was convicted in 1995 for two murders and two aggravated assaults. Homolka was sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment and was released in 2005. Despite the severity of the murders, media attention focused on Homolka’s physical appearance. Newspapers at the time were obsessed with Homolka’s conventional attractiveness; the Washington Post described her appearance on her wedding day. ‘Karla Homolka was resplendent on her wedding day, 29 June 1991. Garlands of baby’s breath adorned her hair and ﬂuffy veil; her long ﬂounced dress made her look like Cinderella’ (Washington Post, 23 November 1993). On her release 12 years later, media attention once again returned to her physical attractiveness. Journalist Georgie Binks (2005), in her reﬂections on the 79

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case, discusses how male investigators and reporters were mesmerized by Homolka. Christie Blachford, a reporter at the time, states that ‘in the days of her trial, there were some male reporters who were titillated by the fact she was so sexually compliant. I remember a colleague saying to me “imagine coming home to that everyday”’ (cited in CBC News, 10 June 2005). Homolka used the ‘pretty girl syndrome’ to her advantage, as Binks commented, ‘you can’t really blame Karla for batting her eyelashes when it counted, because it worked. You can only blame a society that puts the pretty girl above all else’. Tracey Andrews In 1997, Tracey Andrews was convicted of the murder of her boyfriend Lee Harvey, whom she stabbed to death in 1996. Previously she had stated that her boyfriend had been the victim of a ‘road rage incident and even appeared in press conferences appealing to witnesses to come forward. Reports at the time focused on Tracie’s physical appearance and described her as ‘former model Tracy Andrews’ and ‘blonde Tracy Andrews’. On her subsequent arrest The Sun newspaper’s headline read ‘Death Quiz Tracy in Glamour Poses’. The article features numerous glamorous photographs of Tracy Andrews at a photo shoot, stating ‘Sexy Tracy Andrews looks every inch the glamorous model in carefree poses snapped before the nightmare of her ﬁancé’s road rage murder.’ On the day of her conviction (30 July) the tabloid newspaper the Daily Star ran headlines that read ‘The Blonde From Hell’ and ‘Looks That Could Kill’. Clearly tabloid newspapers became obsessed with the fact that Tracy had been a former model and much of the text within the articles focus on her attractiveness rather than the case in hand. Rose West In 1995, Rose West was found guilty of the murders of 10 young women and girls, including her 16-year-old daughter. Her husband Fred West escaped trial as he had committed suicide while on remand in Prison on 1 January 1995. Newspaper reports, both at the time and since then, have focused on Rose West’s ‘frumpy’ appearance. The fact that she did not ﬁt society’s examples of feminine beauty have been used by the media to explain her crimes. The tabloids, for example, surmised that she took part in the killings as she was insecure about her looks and afraid of losing her husband (who had already had affairs). 80

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Thirteen years on and the media still focus on her lack of conventional beauty and her attempts to ‘tidy’ herself up. Recently the Daily Mirror Newspaper ran the headline ‘The New Face of Rose West’ and stated ‘Frumpy Rose, 51, has trimmed her hair to a shorter, neater style and has lost two stone. She has also replaced her bulky glasses for NHS contact lenses and wears pastel colours’. (Daily Mirror, 5 May 2005). Indeed, the victims of Rose West’s crimes are almost ignored by the media’s obsession with her.

QUESTION BREAK The iconic image below is of British murderer Myra Hindley. She was sentenced to life imprisonment in May 1966 for aiding her then lover Ian Brady in the rape and murder of ﬁve children between 1963–1965. She eventually died in prison in 1992 after a battle with cancer. Investigate the way in which the media have portrayed Myra Hindley. What does the media (including newspapers, internet, books) say about her looks and her personality? How do your ﬁndings relate to the concept of the male gaze?

INTIMATE PARTNER KILLINGS AND VICTIM BLAMING In recent years there has been a fascination by the media on the reporting of intimate partner killing. This is most notable when a woman is the murderer. In 2006/2007, 757 deaths were initially recorded as homicides by the police in England and Wales, 75% of which were male. However, only 11% of males were killed by their partner, ex-partner or lover compared to 65% of females (Povery et al. 2008). Within press 81

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reports, the gender of the actors involved in intimate killings holds more news value than the role that they played in the crime as either victim or offender; the focus tends to rest on the female’s role in the case. The female’s private life is scrutinized. Her role as mother, wife, lover and so on are explored and her sexual preferences discussed and held up as an indication of her ‘culpable’ nature, whether as the victim or the offender. Below we consider two British cases of intimate partner killings and how the media reported them. In April 1991, New Zealand student John Tanner murdered his then girlfriend Rachel McLean and buried her body under the ﬂoorboards of her Oxford ﬂat. Tanner appeared on Crimewatch to re-enact his last sighting of Rachel and appealed to the public for any information regarding her disappearance. Her body was discovered nearly three weeks later and Tanner was arrested and charged with murder. The focus of media attention rested on the idea that Tanner had killed Rachel in a ﬁt of jealous rage as he had suspected that she had been unfaithful. Subsequent newspaper coverage focused on Rachel’s alleged inﬁdelity and Tanner’s uncontrollable jealousy. The Daily Telegraph headline after the trial stated, ‘Lover strangled student in jealous rage’ and the Daily Mirror went with ‘Jealous John Tanner strangled his unfaithful girlfriend’. These headlines almost exempt Tanner from his behaviour as this violence is suggested as being ‘out of control’. Conversely, Rachel is described as contributing to her own death; she is a culpable victim, contributing to her own victim status due to the fact that she was unfaithful and so deserved (or was at least partly to blame for) her plight. The most famous British case of intimate partner killings occurred in 1989 when Sara Thornton murdered her husband as he lay in a drunken stupor. The case became famous due to the work of women’s groups. Thornton alleged that she had been the victim of sustained abuse. It was argued in court that her behaviour was the result of battered woman syndrome, although it was stated that this was inadmissible in court, Thornton was given a life sentence in 1990; on appeal the case was retried and she was found guilty of manslaughter on unspeciﬁed grounds and sentenced to ﬁve years in prison but was freed because of the length of time she had already served. Despite unprecedented support from women’s groups, the media portrayal of Thornton was largely unsympathetic and focused on her role as a wife and mother. In a letter to the The Independent in 1991 Sara argued, ‘because I dared to ﬁght I am being ignored … If Malcolm had killed me they would have used everything they are using against me now in his defence. I’d have been portrayed as a woman who nagged him over his drinking, who didn’t always wear knickers, who went off to a conference and left him’. The focus of media attention then is often on the woman; success at fulﬁlling her role as a mother, housewife, wife, not the crime in question.

SEXUALITY Bendict (1992) argued that women are categorized as either Virgin or Vamp, in other words, women are categorized as either saintly Madonnas who are sexually inexperienced or even frigid, or those who are sexually promiscuous or sexually 82

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deviant in their preferences; for example, lesbians and those who engage in deviant practices such as Sado Masochism. These ideas are most noticeable in media coverage of female offenders. In her book Hart (1994) investigates the origins of the link between lesbians and criminals; she suggests that the categorization of women is reserved for the white, middle-class heterosexual female; This leads to the binary classiﬁcation of normal women and ‘other’ in which the lesbian and the criminal fall – they are outside the boundaries of normality. Hart postulates that these ideas emerge from the work of Victorian sexologist Havelock Ellis who discusses the female invert. Not necessarily lesbian but linked to lesbianism due to the aggressive masculine form her desire takes. ‘It is, moreover, noteworthy that a remarkably large portion of the cases in which homosexuality has led to crimes of violence, or otherwise come under medicolegal observations, has been among women’ (1937, ﬁrst published 1905). Hart argues ‘if the “normal” woman was man’s opposite, the invert as the opposite of the normal woman became man’s double. Imagining the female invert as inhabiting his sexual subject position effected a rupture in sexual difference that also established her as a powerful threat to his exclusive claim to masculinity’ (1994, p. 8). These ideas around sexuality are still evident in media coverage of female offenders and have been most noticeable in the case of Aileen Wuornos. Aileen Wuornos Aileen Wuornos was convicted of the murder of seven men. The murders took place between November 1989 and December 1990. She was sentenced to death in 1992 and died a decade later by lethal injection. Working as a prostitute, Wuornos had claimed that the men had raped or had attempted to rape her and that the crimes had been in self-defence. The media portrayals of Wuornos focused on her life as a prostitute and lesbian. In her book, Hart argues that the excessive negative media attention around Wuornos arises from these two factors. Her prostitution and lesbianism posed a threat to the heteropatriarchal. Heteropatriarchy is the idea that power within society belongs to the white male who is heterosexual and masculine, able-bodied and ﬁnancially secure. Due to Wuornos’s prostitution and lesbianism it is said that she crossed the boundaries of the archetypal feminine woman and therefore became the ‘outsider’. Her unconventional lifestyle had a devastating effect on the media portrayal of her trial. Her plea of self-defence was ridiculed and weakened due to the fact that she was a prostitute. It would seem that the right to self-defence is negotiable and a prostitute who sells sex for money has no negotiation. Wuornos’s lesbianism became linked to men hating behaviour. In an article written for Glamour magazine, Former FBI agent Robert Ressler states, ‘There may be an intrinsic hatred of males here, as well as an identiﬁcation with male violence which helped push her across the line into what has been considered a “male” crime … In stark contrast to the complex motives attributed to male serial murderers, and the evocation of those male murderers as essentially unsolvable mysteries, Wuornos’s motives are presented with absolute clarity: she is a lesbian; therefore she hates men and therefore she killed them’ (cited in Schmid 2005). 83

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FICTIONAL REPRESENTATIONS In concluding this section it is worth brieﬂy discussing the use of the ﬁctional and ‘real’ female offender within TV and ﬁlm. Over the last two decades, a genre of Hollywood ﬁlms has emerged depicting female offenders. The narrative of such ﬁlms tend to construct the image of the female offender through her sexuality mental state. Many of the ﬁlms depict the deranged woman who is driven insane and threatens the family unit (especially the mother and the children); for example, Fatal Attraction (1987), The Hand that Rocks the Cradle (1991) and Basic Instinct (1992). Other ﬁlms focus on the male-hating female offender, such as Single White Female (1992). Despite society’s condemnation of female offenders, especially murderers, there does exist a multi-million pound industry around them. Because of TV and Film, these women often become stars/celebrities in their own right. The Aileen Wuornos story, for example, has spurned, up to now, two documentaries ‘Aileen Wuornos: selling of a serial killer’ and the TV Movie ‘Overkill: The Aileen Wuornos Story’; and, most famously the Hollywood smash-hit Monster, which earned an Oscar for Charlize Theron’s depiction of the killer. Holmlund (2002) considers the emergence of a cycle of ﬁlms featuring the lesbian as a sexy female killer coining the term ‘Hollywood’s deadly lesbian dolls’. In his account, Holmlund examines the fact that ‘audiences are both fascinated by, yet uncomfortable with, violent women … [and] a murmured fear of lesbianism lurks beneath the general discomfort with violent women’ (2002, pp. 74, 75).

QUESTION BREAK Look at the publicity for the ﬁlm Monster. (see web sites for this ﬁlm about Aileen Wuornos, such as www.imdb.com) Think of other women criminals – in ﬁlm or television dramas. How would you describe the way they are portrayed? To what extent is their appearance emphasized in the roles they play?

THE MEDIA, ETHNICITY AND CRIMINALS Another important aspect of the pattern and trend in crime ﬁgures relates to the ethnic background of offenders. It is a common stereotype that young males, and especially young ethnic minority and particularly black males, are especially prone to criminal behaviour. And a range of crimes are widely seen as typically committed by young black males. Since the 1960s, for instance, drug use and supply and ‘mugging’ or street robbery have been popularly associated with black people and more recently car jacking and gangland violence have been characterized in a similar way. Illegal immigration and asylum seeking have also been associated with ethnic 84

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minority groups – although this has tended to be associated with Asian and/or Eastern European groups rather than black. Indeed, this highlights the danger of lumping all ethnic minority groups together when examining ‘race and crime’. With regard to this characterization of certain types of crime as typically the preserve of ‘black’ or other ethnic minority groups, in the 1980s and 1990s ‘mugging’ was seen as a crime almost exclusively committed by black youth. Indeed, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Condon controversially stated that the majority of muggers in London were black. Similarly, there has been recent comment and concern about the upsurge in gangland violence and shootings in British cities, which have been associated with black people. However, if we look at the ofﬁcial data on ethnicity and the criminal justice system, it is apparent some of these widely held, ‘populist’ views are not based on any hard evidence. Ofﬁcial Home Ofﬁce statistics on race and the criminal justice system are produced annually as a consequence of the Criminal Justice Act of 1991. As regards the percentage of the population from different ethnic groups, the 2001 census ﬁgures are used, with 2.8% of the general population Black, 4.7% Asian and 1.2% ‘Other’. These proportions need to be kept in mind when looking at the proportions of different ethnic minority groups involved with crime and criminal justice. There were 738,016 stop and searches recorded by the police in 2003/4, of which 15% were of Black people, 7% of Asian and 1% of ‘Other’ ethnic origin; so, relative to the general population ﬁgures, Black people were 6.4 times more likely to be stopped and searched than White people, and Asian people twice as likely. Of 1.33 million arrests for notiﬁable offences, 9% were recorded as being of Black people, 5% Asian and 1% ‘Other’, with Black people over 3 times more likely to be arrested than White people. Furthermore, the proportion of ethnic minority groups in prisons are massively greater than would be expected by the general population ﬁgures. In February 2003, Black and minority ethnic groups accounted for 24% of the male prison population (16% Black, 3% Asian and 5% Other) and 31% of the female prison population (25% Black, 1% Asian and 5% Other). However, these ﬁgures included foreign nationals, who made up 12% of the male and 21% of the female prison populations. So ethnic minority groups are clearly dealt with by the criminal justice system in a manner that indicates that they are seen as more ‘crime prone’ than other groups. Explanations for these differences include arguments that the Black crime rate is over-exaggerated by the statistics and that the criminal justice system is biased against ethnic minority groups. It is not our brief to go into those arguments here (see, for instance, Marsh et al. 2006), but we will look at how the media reporting of crime reﬂects these differences. Before looking at some examples of the media reporting of crime and ethnicity, we will look at two reports into ‘race’ and crime in the news, one from the UK and the other from the US. In an examination of ‘race’ and violent crime in the press entitled ‘A tale of Two Englands’, the Runnymede Trust (2008) explored the reporting of violent crime in relation to the ethnicity of the victims and the offenders, in an attempt to explore the ‘ways in which popular understandings of race and crime inﬂuence reporting in the media and vice-versa’. Among the key ﬁndings were that the patterns of press reporting on violent crime were ‘strongly informed by notions 85

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of race’ and that ‘in essence, England is conceived as two-fold: an England consisting of a law-abiding and morally superior Us; and an England inhabited by criminal and pathological Others’. The report found that journalists were very imprecise when discussing ethnic minority groups and veered towards either the stereotypical associations of particular groups with speciﬁc crimes, such as Eastern European bagsnatchers and Jamaican crack dealers, or lumping all different, ethnic groups together as ‘standing in direct contrast to white middle-class England’. Certainly they found that the typical gang member was seen as being Black and that murders covered in the news were ‘more likely to be assumed to be “gang related” if there was Black youth involved than if all involved were White’. In similar vein, a study into ‘youth, race and crime in the news’ by the Building Blocks for Youth organization in the US (Dorfman 2001) provided a detailed content analysis of crime news by searching criminal justice databases. It found that the ‘depictions of crime in the news are not reﬂective of either the rate of crime generally … (or) the proportion of crime committed by people of color (sic)’. It also found that a disproportionate number of offenders covered by news reporting were from ethnic minority groups, especially African Americans. In particular Black and Hispanic groups were over-represented as violent offenders and Whites under-represented on evening news programmes. In concluding, the report makes the point that news organizations routinely watch and ‘borrow’ from each other and that this encourages them to repeat distortions, including ‘the distorted picture of crime, race and youth from the news’. As we have seen throughout this book so far, it is through the reporting of crime by newspapers and on television that messages reach the wider public about the extent and pattern of crime. And it is the way that headlines are phrased and the content and style of the narrative that is used in stories about crime that help to shape public attitudes. In considering the way that the ethnicity and cultural background of criminals inﬂuences, if not determines, the way that those criminals are portrayed and represented, it is important to look at examples of media reporting. At the start of this section we pointed out that certain ethnic minority groups are seen as particularly likely to be disproportionately involved in crime (groups such as young Blacks and Eastern European asylum seekers for instance) and that certain crimes are closely associated with speciﬁc groups (so for example, Black youths are associated with violent robbery – ‘mugging’). In the question break box below we have included newspaper reports on young Black criminals and on Eastern European criminals to illustrate the way that the news reporting of crime and criminals helps to establish and then conﬁrm stereotypes about ethnic background and crime.

QUESTION BREAK Read the extracts on Black and East European/‘foreign’ criminals before considering the questions below them. Extracts 1 to 4 relate to Black criminals; the ﬁrst three are from mainstream newspapers, while the fourth is from The Epoch Times, an independent news media company that was established in 2003

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as a web-based organization before becoming a printed newspaper in 2004; it is based in New York but with a global network of reporters. Extracts 5–9 relate to asylum seekers and East European criminals and are from popular tabloid newspapers. 1. Black Youths Blamed for most Mobile Phone Thefts Black youths, often operating in gangs, are behind the huge rise in mobile phone thefts in inner cities, according to research. They are responsible for the ‘overwhelming majority’ of robberies and most of their victims are white, a Home Ofﬁce Study said yesterday. In London, where eight per cent of the population aged over 10 is black, about 70 per cent of those accused of stealing mobile phones last year were black. White youths were the victims in the vast majority of cases, followed by Asian youths. (Johnston P. and Barrow B., The Daily Telegraph, 7 January 2002) 2. 70% of Muggers are Black in Robbery Hotspots Black suspects make up more than 70 per cent of muggers in some of the worst hotspots for street robbery in England and Wales, according to new research. A study published yesterday by the Home Ofﬁce showed that up to 87 per cent of victims in Lambeth, South London, told the police that their attackers were black. Nearly 80 per cent of the victims were white. Black people account for 31 per cent of the population in these areas. 82 per cent of victims on the London underground and 70 per cent of victims on commuter railways around London also identiﬁed their muggers as black. (Tendler S. The Times, 10 January 2003) 3. Are Young Black Kids to Blame for the Gun and Knife Crimewave? Tony Blair yesterday admitted that political correctness has hampered the ﬁght against violent black gangs and called for a change in crime policy … ‘We won’t stop this by pretending it isn’t young black kids doing it’, he said, conceding that he has undergone a change of heart over multi-cultural policing. (The Daily Express, 12 April 2007) 4. Youth Gangs Running Wild in England Young black teenagers in Britain are falling into criminal gangs because of family breakdown and lack of positive role models, community workers say. Since January there have been 17 shootings and stabbings in London alone, as police warn that the rise in teenage gangs is the worst problem facing Britain, after terrorism. (Jones S. The Epoch Times, 16 August 2007)

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5. Migrants Send Our Crime Rate Soaring Police are struggling to cope with a wave of violent crime caused by the arrival of hundreds of thousands of immigrants, one of Britain’s senior ofﬁcers has warned. Mike Fuller, Chief Constable of Kent, says his force is being stretched to the limit by the huge numbers ﬂocking into the UK. He blames these ‘migration surges’ for a 35 per cent rise in violent crime in his county. His worries are voiced in a letter to Home Secretary Jacqui Smith which was leaked at the weekend.’ (Fagge N. The Daily Express, 28 January 2008) 6. We Could Have Easily Avoided This Crime Crisis The victimization of the British public by gangs of Romanian thieves must rank as the most predictable crime wave ever to sweep on to our shores. This newspaper repeatedly warned that a surge in offending would take place if Romania was allowed to join the European Union as a full member. And so it has come to pass. (Daily Express, 15 February 2008) 7. Foreign Fugitive Rape Rap An asylum seeker who dodged deportation has been arrested over a rape and an attempted murder, police said yesterday. Dangerous fugitive Caliph Ali Asmar, 25, was nabbed after a call from a member of the public following a nationwide alert … This week it emerged that Asmar ﬁrst applied for asylum in Britain in 2001 and was refused, but he was not removed. In 2005 he was jailed for two years at Hull Crown Court for wounding and the judge, Recorder Andrew Woolman, recommended him for deportation. He was freed after only eight months but ofﬁcials under crisis-hit Home Secretary Charles Clarke ignored the judge’s advice and allowed him to stay in the country. (Taylor A. The Sun, 5 May 2006) 8. The Killer Asylum Seekers Two members of the armed gang which killed PC Sharon Beshenivsky were Somali asylum seekers with a catalogue of criminal convictions … Yusuf Abdillh Jama and his older brother Mustaf could not be deported back to their homeland because the Home Ofﬁce ruled it was too dangerous. Yet after the murder Mustaf went on the run – back to Somali … Yesterday, the ofﬁcer’s heartbroken husband Paul said: ‘It is absolutely disgusting that this man – a criminal who acts like an animal – is shown human rights. What about my kids, my wife, my family?’ … Mr Beshenivsky expressed his fury at the system that put the needs of his wife’s killers above those of her family … He said: ‘If they are violent and they are

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asylum seekers in this country, they shouldn’t be allowed to stay here, full stop’. (Greenhill S. Seamark M. and Sims P. Daily Mail, 19 December 2006) 9. Swan Bake: Asylum Seekers Steal the Queen’s Birds for Barbecues Callous asylum seekers are barbecuing the Queen’s swans … East European poachers lure the protected royal birds into baited traps … Police swooped on a gang of East Europeans and caught them red-handed about to cook a pair of royal swans. (The Sun, 4 July 2003)

QUESTIONS How would you describe the reporting of Black youth in extracts 1 to 4? How would you describe the portrayal of East Europeans in extracts 5 to 9? What sort of messages do these extracts promote about those ethnic minority groups? What particular phrases might help establish stereotypical views of such groups?

As a follow up to the newspaper extracts included in the question break above, an important point to consider when looking at media reporting of crime and their role in establishing stereotypical pictures of different ethnic criminal groups is that the media can and do exaggerate stories; and there is little that can be done to reverse any negative portrayal that might have been created. For instance, the story in The Sun about East Europeans eating royal swans was shown to be inaccurate, yet the comments will still remain in the readers’ minds. Indeed, the independent media watchdog, the Pressurewise Trust, accused The Sun of ‘urban myth-making’ by printing the story of asylum seekers stealing and eating swans. Pressurewise asked the police about the alleged incident and found that no one had been charged with any such offences and although The Sun was forced to print a clariﬁcation to the story, Pressurewise felt this was not enough. As a spokesmen for them said: ‘There is no solid evidence to support a sensational story that has entered the public imagination, yet ﬁve months later The Sun is simply obliged to run a disclaimer that it confused conjecture with fact’ (www.pressgazette.co.uk).

THE MEDIA, CRIMINALS AND ‘CRIMINAL COMMUNITIES’ This section does not strictly refer to how the media portrays criminals but rather focuses on the way that different communities are represented in the 89

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media; and in particular the negative representation of certain communities as ‘criminal areas or communities’. However, given that this chapter has examined how the media has presented some of the key social and environmental characteristics of the criminal, it would seem appropriate to look also at geographical environment in relation to the media reporting of crime and criminals. In recent years, in particular, ‘local leaders’, including politicians and decisionmakers, have emphasized the importance of their cities or areas having a positive, attractive image. It is believed that public image, which is largely spread via the different forms of media, can and does have major implications for their area – a positive image can work in terms of attracting business and money, new residents and cultural developments; while a negative one can have the reverse effect. Indeed, a negative image is seen as an obstacle that will work against a better future for the city or area. While many different factors will inﬂuence the image of an area, crime rate is one of the most signiﬁcant – a high crime rate, or even the perception of an area as having a high crime rate, leads to bad publicity and a negative effect on the area. The American city of Chicago was heavily associated with gangland crime in the early years of the twentieth century – infamous for the exploits of Al Capone and others in the 1920s and 1930s. And even though the crime rate in Chicago was one of the lowest among American cities by the later years of the twentieth century, it is still generally perceived and referred to as a city of crime and violence – in other words, the stereotype, perpetuated by the media in ﬁlms and books, persists. Before looking at the way different areas are portrayed by the media, the question break below asks you to think about how areas you know are represented by the media.

QUESTION BREAK Consider the areas around where you live (or have lived). Can you think of areas that have a negative image? What part does the amount of crime play in promoting this image? Which cities in the UK have a positive image and which negative? Can you suggest reasons for these images?

Criminology as an academic, scientiﬁc discipline developed in the early twentieth century, and much of early criminological theorizing focused on explaining why crime occurred in urban areas and cities. Indeed, as Crutchﬁeld and Kubrin (2007) put it, ‘early twentieth century criminology might reasonably be considered the criminology of urban places’. And a concern about the effects of urban and city living on crime rates did not begin with criminologists; many of the great early 90

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social theorists and sociologists such as Durkheim, Weber and Tonnies wrote about the changes to society and social relationships that resulted from the transition of societies from rural, village-based ones to urbanized and industrial ones. They talked about and analysed the dislocation and disorganization that would result as a consequence of the massive social changes brought about by the move to urban living; and that part of this disorganization would take the form of increased criminal behaviour. However, it was in the 1920s and 1930s that social scientists based at the University of Chicago explored the notion that modern, industrial and urban societies would bring with them greater social disorganization and a growth in social problems, including crime. The approach and theorizing of these sociologists became known as the Chicago school. Chicago grew at a phenomenal rate in these early years of the twentieth century, becoming a massive metropolis with a diverse population, including European immigrants from Ireland, Germany and Eastern Europe and Black Americans from the southern states of the USA. It has been described as a vast social laboratory and so it is not surprising that the ﬁrst university sociology department in the USA was established there in 1892. The Chicago school was interested in examining and explaining the variations in crime levels within different areas of cities, observing that some areas of cities had consistently higher crime rates than others regardless of who populated those areas (Crutchﬁeld and Kubrin 2007). They argued that social life in certain neighbourhoods was chaotic and pathological and that in such contexts crime was to be expected as a normal response. One of the key ﬁgures in establishing the reputation of the Chicago school was Robert Park. Park and his colleagues believed that cities should be studied as ecological systems, with different areas and neighbourhoods within them developing at different times and in particular ways. Some neighbourhoods were relatively stable and well organized, others were more socially disorganized, and it was in those that crime, and other social problems, tended to be concentrated. Another leading ﬁgure of the Chicago school, Ernest Burgess, developed the ecological approach by mapping out different zones of Chicago. These zones formed concentric circles covering the whole city – at the centre was the business zone containing banks and ofﬁces, beyond this were the residential zones, starting with the ‘zone of transition’, just outside the business zone, then the zone of working men’s homes, then the residential zone and ﬁnally the commuter zone. The zone of transition was the one where crime and other social problems were concentrated – in this zone the housing tended to be run down, the population was transient, the inhabitants were often immigrants and others who could not afford to live elsewhere. Two Chicago sociologists, Shaw and McKay (1942), examined patterns of juvenile crime in that city and found that the extent of crime was inversely related to the wealth of the area of the city – and the further away from the centre the wealthier were the areas. They found that crime rates were highest in the ‘slum’ areas, regardless of who lived in those areas, thereby developing the argument mentioned above that it was the nature of a neighbourhood, rather than the people and groups who lived there, that determined the extent of criminal behaviour. 91

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QUESTION BREAK Go back to the question break above (p. 89) and consider the extent to which your ﬁndings matched those of the Chicago school. Divide the area or cities you considered into different zones – are there zones which you know to be particularly prone to crime? The notion of criminal areas, then, is one which has been developed by social theorists and criminologists and so it is perhaps not surprising that the media portray certain cities, areas and neighbourhoods in such a light. And these representations are accepted and used by other bodies. Insurance companies, for instance, vary the premiums they charge people for insuring against theft according to the area in which people live. As an example, the Endsleigh insurance company analysed its claims data covering tens of thousands of households across Britain and published on its web page a list of the cities with the highest risk for burglary, and those which were safest from burglary. The company found that Leeds was the city where you are most likely to suffer a burglary (with a burglary rate 99% above the national average), followed by Hull and Nottingham, with Edinburgh, Cardiff and Swindon the least burglary prone cities. Other internet sites refer to crime rates in promoting or not a particular area – so in relation to house buying, for example, an American site, www.ezinearticles.com, highlights ‘signs of a bad neighbourhood’, including broken windows, grafﬁti and abandoned cars. It suggests that a less obvious indication is whether there are people walking around on a warm evening or at weekends and, if so, it means that the area is likely to have little crime; another indication being the number and regularity of police patrols. In the UK, Liverpool is one of a number of northern cities that is portrayed in the media as crime-ridden, and is regularly the butt of jokes to that effect. Amongst others, Boris Johnson, the Conservative MP and more recently Mayor of London was forced to apologize for making unﬂattering comments about the city, as was TV presenter Anne Robinson for joking about thieving Scousers on The Weakest Link game show. Writing in The Independent, Jonathon Brown (2006) commented that the British national media have ‘written off the country’s second most famous town as a shell-suited, hub-cap-nicking “self pity city”’. He refers to the editor of the local paper, The Liverpool Echo, Alastair Machray, commenting that Liverpool gets a rough ride from the rest of the country, with a combination of bad news and Liverpool guaranteed to generate special coverage and excitement in the London-based media: Negative stories always get followed up by the nationals and all newspapers are guilty of focusing on the negative. But … if something bad happens it makes it a better story if it happens in Liverpool, rather than Leeds or Colchester. That is bewildering. In considering these ideas on the importance of the image of cities and towns, the success of and publicity around the book Crap Towns (published in 2003) is 92

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worth considering brieﬂy. While the title hardly suggests this is an academic source, it is important to bear in mind that the role of the popular media is probably more important in inﬂuencing public perceptions – and the popular media includes books, as well as newspaper, television and the internet. The idea for Crap Towns came after Simon Jordison wrote an article in The Idler (a magazine for people who enjoyed their leisure) criticizing his home town, Morecambe, for its ‘desolate’ promenades. This led to him being sent comments and opinions on different towns from all over the country, which he and his friend Dan Kieran edited into the book (they had previously produced a book on Crap Jobs which had been quite successful). They felt that everyone had either grown up in, or at least visited, a town they despised and the replies from readers suggested they were right. The sub-title of the book was The 50 Worst Places to Live in the UK and the authors found that Hull came out at the top – one former resident of Hull describing it as ‘a sad story of unemployment, teenage pregnancy, heroin addiction, crime, violence and rampant self-neglect’. The local media’s response to this illustrates the importance attached to how the image of location is represented. The Hull Daily Mail got on to the story and invited the writer of the above quote to have a look around Hull and ran a front page article on his experiences and his subsequent comments that he ‘actually quite liked the place’. The book certainly touched a nerve and the authors found themselves insulted on Radio Wales and joked about in The Sun.

QUESTION BREAK Although only light-hearted Crap Towns (2003) certainly gained a good deal of wider media publicity. Listed here are the ten towns which came out as worst – before considering the questions below, make your own list.

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The top 10 worst towns: Hull, Cumbernauld, Morecambe, Hythe, Winchester, Liverpool, St Andrews, Bexhill-on-Sea, Basingstoke, Hackney. (Jordison and Kieran (eds) (2003) The Idler Book of Crap Towns)

QUESTIONS If you were describing your ‘worst’ town/city, what factors would inﬂuence you? What role, if any, would crime play in your decision?

The negative media portrayal of certain areas and towns is further evidenced by looking at the opposite end of the spectrum – peaceful, small-scale, rural-based areas are, in contrast, represented as places where crime is unusual. Indeed, so much so that when crimes, and particularly serious crimes, occur in such areas, they tend to make bigger news than if they had occurred in more ‘expected’ places. Murders in rural areas or villages invariably attract comments about ‘sleepy villages being shocked’ – both in terms of the media reporting and representation of real crime and ﬁctional crime. Starting with ﬁctional portrayals, the popular television series Midsomer Murders (a series which has been running since 1997) plays on the fact that it reverses the stereotypical of English village life. Based on the detective novels of Caroline Graham, and ﬁlmed in the English countryside, the programme uncovers and probes the criminal undercurrents that lie beneath the idyllic surface of village life in Midsomer. Part of the programme’s attraction and certainly its surprise element is that, behind the peaceful and picturesque facade of this prosperous village, all sorts of vices and intrigues are afoot. In terms of the media reporting of real-life crime, those crimes that occur in rural areas are typically described in relation to the backdrop of their supposedly peaceful environment. The following headline from The Independent illustrates this tendency, ‘Typical English village, except for the paedophile moving back home’ (24 August 1998). Below the headline, the article continues, ‘In a scene typical of any English village a group of carefree children laughed and joked this weekend as they rode their bikes outside the village post ofﬁce in Sonning Common. But this group is unlikely to be allowed out on their own for very much longer. In a couple of weeks, Rhys Hughes, a predatory paedophile with a 30-year history of abusing children, will be released from prison. He intends to return to his house in the scenic Oxfordshire village from where he terrorised children, including a ﬁve-year-old girl who lived nearby … And because the 65-year-old retired gardener was sentenced three months before the introduction of the 1991 Criminal Justice Act he cannot be made to conform to any supervision … He can come and go as he likes from the house he still owns’. 94

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In one of the most widely reported and harrowing of child murders in recent years, the abduction and murder of 10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in August 2002, the nature of the location of the crime, the Cambridge village of Soham, was regularly commented on by the media. The following extract is from BBC News 24: On visiting Soham the ﬁrst thing that strikes you is how small it is … Soham feels sleepy, safe and typically English … it’s the kind of place where parents could let their children out unsupervised without undue concern. (17 December 2003) Although such crimes are reacted to with outrage and anger wherever they occur, the fact that they have occurred in rural areas or villages adds an extra, almost sensationalized, element to the way that they are reported in the media. In concluding this brief review of the part that geographical location can play in the media representation of crime and criminals, it would be useful to consider the links between the media and fear of crime in relation to location. In his recent research examining the media and fear of crime in a local context, Banks (2005) highlights the neglect of spatial context in research into the way the audience receives the media coverage of crime and argues for the development of more ‘place sensitive’ research. In particular, Banks analyses the way in which media representation of crime relates to the day-to-day lives of two middle-class households in Manchester. Even though ignored in much of the media coverage of crime, Banks argues that where people live and how people feel about those areas can have a major impact on the way that images of crime and criminals are interpreted. ‘Sense of place’ is one of the key variables that should be taken into account in examining and establishing the link between the media and crime. The two households he researched were the ‘Kents’ and the ‘Henshaws’, both white, middle-class families from similar social and educational backgrounds, living in the relatively prosperous suburb of Manchester, Didsbury. One family, the ‘Kents’ consumed a great deal of crime news and crime drama, from both television and the local press. Even though they had suffered break-ins they felt little sense of fear of crime. Banks suggests this is because they had lived locally for years, and had an extended family and friendship network living nearby – they ‘felt connected and conﬁdent in their environment’. In this context, the media emphasis on crime was accepted and absorbed as a manageable risk. By contrast, the ‘Henshaws’ were not born and raised locally and had few family or social ties in the area. They tended to avoid watching and reading about crime in the media. They were a much more insulated family and, even though they had not been victims of crime, the impression they gave was of a household ‘somewhat fearful and under siege from crime, both “real” and represented’. So, in spite of similarities in terms of background and where they lived, there were clear differences between the two families in terms of how they used the media and their attitudes and responses to the media presentation of crime and criminals – differences that seemed to reﬂect different approaches to how they viewed their communities and localities. 95

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THE MEDIA, CLASS AND CRIMINALS Here we will consider the extent to which the social class background of criminals inﬂuences the media representation of them. In many ways, however, social class is a less straightforward area to examine and analyse than, say, age, gender or location, all of which are relatively easy to measure. The measurement, and indeed concept, of social class has been an area of considerable debate, both in academic circles and more generally. While people are aware of their age, gender and where they live and are able to give speciﬁc answers when asked, the situation with class is less clear cut. People might classify themselves as working, middle or upper class, for instance, by referring to a range of criteria – perhaps their occupation, their wealth, their family background or their education. Having said that, social class is generally measured by social scientists by reference to occupation. Although it is not necessary to go into the academic debates over the meaning and measuring of social class, a few brief comments before discussing it in relation to the media and criminals would be helpful. As mentioned, most social scientists see class position as largely determined by an individual’s place in the economic system in terms of their occupation; and most would regard modern industrial societies as being stratiﬁed on the basis of social class. Although there have been different classiﬁcations of occupation in terms of class, in Britain class has typically been deﬁned using the Registrar-General’s scale of social class (see Table 2 below). This consists of six major class groupings, with class 3 sub-divided into non-manual and manual occupations; and in terms of social class groupings, middle class referred to groups 1, 2 and 3a and working class to the rest, from 3b to 5. Table 2 The Registrar-General’s scale of social class and socio-economic groups 1. Higher level professionals, managers and administrators 2. Lower level professionals, managers and administrators 3a. Lower level white-collar workers 3b. Skilled manual workers 4. Semi-skilled manual workers 5. Unskilled manual workers

While there have been more sophisticated attempts to classify different occupations in terms of class, with regard to examining media representations we will refer to upper, middle and working class in relation to broad occupational categories – so that upper class is associated with ownership of property, in particular land; middle class refers to those with non-manual occupations; and working class to those with manual occupations. Although crime is committed by individuals from the whole range of social backgrounds, ofﬁcial statistics do show a strong association between social class and criminality, and that this is especially so with crimes of violence. And this link has led to a massive range of theorizing about why certain groups and individuals 96

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commit crime – and whether or not it reﬂects biases in the detection and prosecuting of offenders. However, those theoretical debates and issues are not our interest here, rather it is on how the media reports and represents offenders from different social backgrounds. In particular, we will look at how middle-class offenders are represented – by focusing on the media portrayal of white-collar crime (almost by deﬁnition middle-class crime) and white-collar criminals. The key ﬁgure in the development of the study of white-collar crime is American sociologist Edwin Sutherland, whose work in the 1940s and beyond aimed to move criminology’s attention away from crimes committed by those from lower social classes and towards those crimes committed by ‘respectable’ members of society. However, his work, and indeed that of later criminologists, has encountered difﬁculties in trying to provide a tight deﬁnition of white-collar crime. As Newburn (2007) points out, Sutherland’s use of the term white-collar crime refers to three different types of crime – ‘crimes committed by people of high status … crimes committed on behalf of organizations … (and) crimes committed against organizations.’ It is the ﬁrst of these, the social status of the offender, that will be the focus of our discussion of the media. Partly because of the nature of white-collar crime – for instance, the fact that it generally takes place in private, the offenders will usually have a legitimate reason for being at the scene of the crime and that often there is no obvious victim or complainant – it is likely that white-collar crime is under recorded in ofﬁcial crime statistics to an even greater degree than more ‘conventional’ crimes. Furthermore, relatively few white-collar offenders are dealt with by the criminal justice system, so that information on their social backgrounds is not easy to ﬁnd. Newburn (2007) suggests that the higher status white-collar offenders are especially likely to enjoy considerable protection from prosecution because of their status. He refers to the prosecution for fraud in 2007 of Conrad Black, a British life peer and owner of Telegraph newspapers, as an ‘exception to the more general trend in which elite offenders tend to manage to avoid prosecution and conviction’. So, given these characteristics of white-collar crime, it is not surprising that white-collar offenders, as well as crimes, get relatively little coverage in the media. In an analysis of crime stories in national and Sunday newspapers, Tombs and Whyte (2001) found that the reporting of conventional crime stories was far greater than that of corporate crime; and that ‘the overwhelming focus upon “conventional crimes” is greatest in the tabloids, while the imbalance is less stark in broadsheets, and particularly in the more liberal Observer and Guardian’. Also, that those corporate crime stories that were covered were unlikely to be in the ﬁrst few pages of newspapers, but rather tended to appear away from headline news and in more specialist sections such as ‘business’ or ‘ﬁnance’ pages. Tombs and Whyte are somewhat pessimistic about corporate and white-collar crime and criminals getting more media coverage in future, as they put it: It is sixty years since Edwin Sutherland’s attempts to free the discipline of criminology from the grip of dominant deﬁnitions of ‘crime’ handed down by the powerful. Is it not time that a few more of us started to redress this grossly distorted story? (p. 22) 97

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We have spent some time considering the ambiguous nature of white-collar crime and how it is responded to. It seems clear that the reporting of white-collar, business crime and criminals raises questions that, according to Nelken (2007), differ from those posed by other types of criminal behaviour, such as ‘Why do they do it when they have so much to lose?’ It would certainly seem to be the case that people (and, presumably, the media) have difﬁculty in seeing supposedly ‘respectable’ people with well paid and regarded jobs as also being criminals. In concluding this brief discussion, we will look at the media portrayal of two (in)famous white-collar criminals whose offences cost their employers a small fortune – Jerome Kerviel and Nick Leeson. Jerome Kerviel is the trader who cost the French bank, Societe Generale, something like £3.7 billion in the biggest fraud in ﬁnancial history, discovered in January 2008. The newspaper reporting of this fraud portrayed Kerviel as either a ‘genius’ or emphasized his relative ordinariness, with quotes from his previous tutors suggesting ‘he was a student just like others … and he didn’t distinguish himself from others’ (International Herald Tribune, 25 January 2008). The scandal led to a ﬂurry of clips and comments on the web, with many defending and even glorifying Kerviel: Jerome Kerviel may have lost Societe Generale £3.7bn, but he is also rapidly becoming a hero among the viral video community (The Guardian, 1 February 2008) And this scandal has led to a resurgence of interest in and comment on previous rogue traders, notably Nick Leeson. Nick Leeson’s risk-taking cost Barings Bank £800 million and led to its collapse in 1995. It also led to him being sentenced to six and a half years in jail in Singapore. Leeson was released after three and half years, in 1999, and, having survived that, has since become something of a media celebrity – a ﬁlm based on him, Rogue Trader, starring Ewan McGregor was released in 1999, he has his own web site, speaks regularly at conferences and dinners and published an autobiography, ‘Back from the Brink: Coping with Stress’ in 2005. The public and media reaction to large scale fraudsters such as Kerviel and Leeson does seem to contain a good deal of admiration, if grudging, that sits at odds with the way ‘conventional’ criminals are responded to (an issue explored in the question break below).

QUESTION BREAK Read the following extracts – taken from Nick Leeson’s web site; the CNN’s (Cable News Network) selection of the top 10 British villains; and the Daily Mirror’s article on which offenders have their Honours taken off them and which do not. Nick Leeson web site Welcome

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Welcome to the ofﬁcial website of Nick Leeson – the rogue trader whose unchecked risk-taking caused the biggest ﬁnancial scandal of the 20th century. The collapse of Barings Bank (personal bank to HM The Queen) in 1995 and Nick Leeson’s role in it, is one of the most spectacular debacles in modern ﬁnancial history. How could one trader bring down the banking empire that had funded the Napoleonic Wars? … Following Barings’ collapse Nick Leeson was sentenced to six and half years in a gang-ridden Singaporean jail, in conditions that defy belief, while at the same time, his wife left him and he was diagnosed with colon cancer. Against all odds, Nick Leeson survived and, now fully recovered from cancer, lives happily in Ireland with second wife Leona and three children. In 2005 Nick was appointed General Manager of Galway United FC. Nick Leeson continues to speak regularly at conference dinners and June 2005 saw the release of his new book Back from the Brink: Coping with Stress. The Screening Room’s Top 10 British Villains According to Hollywood, nothing says ‘I’m an evil mastermind’ like a cutglass British accent … as one of the movie world’s favourite stereotypes, this month we celebrate the London Film Festival by picking our top 10 British villains … 1. 2. 3. 4. 5=. 5=. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Laurence Olivier as Richard III (Richard III, 1955) Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin (Star Wars, 1977) Christopher Lee as Dracula (Dracula, 1958) Ian McDiarmid as Emperor Palpatine (Return of the Jedi, 1983) Alan Rickman as The Sheriff of Nottingham (Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, 1991) Basil Rathbone as The Sheriff of Nottingham (The Adventures of Robin Hood, 1938) Malcolm McDowell as Alex de Large (A Clockwork Orange, 1971) Carl Boehm as Mark Lewis (Peeping Tom, 1960) Ian McKellan as Magneto (X-Men, 2000) Terry-Thomas as Raymond Delauney (School for Scoundrels, 1960) (www.ccn.com/entertainment, 26 October 2007)

This is a Gong Wrong Tory apologists have been quick to enter the row over Naseem Hamed having his MBE stripped while Jeffrey Archer is allowed to remain a lord. ‘It’s not an establishment stitch-up’, one said on the radio. ‘It’s simply because no laws exist to eject convicted criminals from the House of Lords’. And he’s right. But what about disgraced dames and knights? How about saying to a gerrymandering voterigger who committed perjury in trying to cheat the British taxpayer out of £42 million that you can no longer

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call yourself Dame Shirley Porter? How about saying to Mark Thatcher, who plea-bargained his way out of an African jail after helping to ﬁnance a failed coup, that we’re taking back your inherited knighthood, ridiculously awarded to your dad for getting legless while smacked by your mother’s handbag? Of course, there’s one rule for someone from a Shefﬁeld council estate like Naseem (who was only given a piddling MBE to tick the ethnic/class box and make the shameless Honours List look all embracing) and another for Tory politicians and their offspring handed titles as Establishment payback. Naseem has been stripped like jockey Lester Piggot (taxﬁddling) and darts player Phil Taylor (assault) because they are seen as scummy little oiks who should never have been allowed in the gentleman’s club in the ﬁrst place. Thatcher and Porter may have brought greater shame on Queen and country, but the powers-that-be have their lineage to think of …’ (Reade B. Daily Mirror, 4 January 2007)

QUESTIONS Compare the ways in which convicted large scale fraudsters, for instance Nick Leeson, and ‘conventional’ offenders are responded to by the media and public. Why do you think there is a degree of admiration for criminals such as Leeson? How would you describe the class background of the 10 ﬁlm villains in the CNN top 10 British villains list? To what extent do you agree with the comments made by Reade in the Daily Mirror extract?

FURTHER READING Jewkes Y. (2004) Media and Crime, London: Sage. Chapter 5 of this excellent general text explores how the media respond to serious offending by women and analyses the stereotypical media portrayals of female criminals. Mason P. (ed.) (2003) Criminal Visions: Media Representations of Crime and Justice, London: Sage. An edited collection, part 2 of which focuses on how the media represents different types of criminal, including bank robbers, sex offenders, terrorists and serial killers.

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CHAPTER 5 ❚ Theories and methods of research in victimology ❚ Theorizing surveillance ❚ The frustration of CCTV footage

The Media Portrayal of Victims As we have seen throughout this book, the media, in all their various forms, are the vehicle by which the average person gets to know the world around them. It is pretty clear that the media play a major part in the developing, if not the actual social construction, of stereotypes – and most notably those that portray groups and activities in a critical or negative way. They have the power to criminalize individuals and whole sections of society and help to create moral panics around certain issues (see Chapter 3 on moral panics). And of course, the reporting of and writing about crime, in particular, allows and even encourages moral evaluations concerning what should be seen as good and what bad. It is not surprising, then, that the media can and do also contribute to the way we react to and perceive the victims of crime. This chapter will explore the links between the production and dissemination of the media’s presentation of crime stories involving victims and the existing social and cultural norms. Before examining the media presentation of victims, it is worth while ﬁrst to brieﬂy consider the development of academic victimology and the various theoretical strands within the discipline that have helped in the formation of our perception of victims of crime in general.

THEORIES AND METHODS OF RESEARCH IN VICTIMOLOGY The term victimology was ﬁrst coined by Frederick Wertham, who called for a ‘science of victimology’ (Wertham 1949). However, in terms of the historical development of victimology, it can be argued that Hans von Hentig and Bartholomew Mendelsohn are the theorists generally recognized as the ‘founding fathers’ of the sub-discipline. Both have been profoundly inﬂuential in establishing victimology 101

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as an academic discipline, but in quite distinct ways. Von Hentig’s work is closely linked to criminology in that its concern and focus is with the victims of crime – so victimology is analysed as a part of criminology. In contrast, Mendelsohn’s victimological theorizing is very much bound up in the philosophy of human rights – and victimology is seen as, essentially, an independent discipline. This division, and Mendelsohn’s views in particular, help explain why victimology has been able to incorporate those who are best described as ‘unconventional victims’ – a particular area that has been crucial to the development of both radical and critical victimology (which we look at below). However, despite these differences, both theorists are proponents of what has become widely known as positivist or conventional victimology. The key characteristics of positive victimology can be described as, ‘the identiﬁcation of factors which contribute to a non random pattern of victimization, a focus on interpersonal crimes of violence, and a concern to identify victims who may have contributed to their own victimization’ (Miers 1989). Miers, therefore, draws upon a number of inﬂuences which underpin positivist victimology, including a concern with the patterns and regularities of victimization and the development and application of the key concepts of ‘victim precipitation’, ‘victim proneness’ and lifestyle. Arguably the ﬁrst systematic study of the victims of crime was von Hentig’s book, The Criminal and his Victim(s), published in 1948 (of course, the use of the male term was even more the norm in the 1940s). Von Hentig proposed a dynamic approach which discussed how the offender and the victim were involved in an interaction, thereby challenging the concept of the victim as passive. The Criminal and his Victim includes a chapter dealing with victims entitled ‘The Contribution of the Victim to the Genesis of the Crime’ in which the concept of victim proneness – the notion that some individuals might be more susceptible to victimization than others – is discussed. Individuals may be prone due to their social and/or psychological state. In other words there are characteristics which may have precipitated the offence through which they were victimized. Mendelsohn (1963), on the other hand, argued that certain victims of crime were more or less culpable – an obvious example of greater culpability being the aggressor who through the fault of his own actions is killed. While both of these approaches tend to overemphasize notions of blame and vulnerability, they nevertheless provided the impetus for further research within the discipline of victimology. Furthermore, the idea of the blameworthy victim was to form the basis for theories of victim precipitation. Victim precipitation is based on the notion that there are certain situations in which the victim is a direct precipitator of the offence. So, for instance, in a murder case the victim may have precipitated the crime by having been the ﬁrst to use physical force or a weapon. Positivist ideas have led to a great deal of debate and have been strongly criticized, not least because of their attempts to cite the victim’s role as a causal effect in their victimization. The use of the notion of victim precipitation and its connotations of victim blaming is highly controversial, but still remains a prominent feature in the formulation of explanations and reasons for crime which are employed by various agencies within the criminal justice system. 102

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QUESTION BREAK Suggest which groups of victims of crime are more likely to be blamed for their victimization? Why do you think this is? Put the following groups of people in order in terms of them being at risk of becoming victims of crime; and brieﬂy explain your reasons for this ranking: Young males; homosexuals; old people; ethnic minorities; young females; people living in rural areas; people living in urban areas.

Radical victimology In response to some of the criticism lodged against positive victimology, the radical victimological perspective emerged in the late 1960s and 1970s. As mentioned, radical victimology can be traced back to the work of Mendelsohn and his argument for a victimology of human rights that allows for exploration of the role of the state in deﬁning who ‘legitimate’ victims are and, more importantly, how the criminal justice system is implicated in the ‘construction’ of victims and criminals. As a consequence, radical victimology acknowledges, in particular, those victims who have been rendered invisible. These victims have been best described by Quinney (1971) as ‘victims of police force, the victims of war, the victims of the correctional system, the victims of state violence, the victims of oppression of any sort’. Radical victimology’s holistic approach towards the victim allows issues relating particularly to women, such as rape/domestic violence, to enter the public arena. Moreover, the emphasis on the role of the state in the production of victims gives the corporate/white-collar victim a legitimate status. What might be termed conventional radical victimology has, then, helped to expose the limited structural basis of victimization and therefore the problems facing the poor and the powerless. However, it did not contribute in any meaningful way to empirical research. And, as implied above, although positivist victimology generated much invaluable data, its research was based upon conventional constructions of crime and therefore neglected sexual and racially motivated crime and victims of corporate crime. Critical victimology Partly as a response to the shortcomings of other previous victimological perspectives and partly to build on the insights of feminism and left realist approaches, a new, ‘critical’ victimological approach has emerged in recent years. As with radical victimology, which it overlaps with in a number of ways, it is based on an essentially interpretivist, ‘micro’ approach to theorizing about social issues – in the context of victimology to theorising about victims of crime. Critical victimology 103

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looks to include the ‘hidden’ victims of crime in its analysis and to consider and highlight the role of the state in perpetuating inequalities in the ‘production of victims’. The early critical victimological approach has been criticized and developed by Walklate (1989, 1990) amongst others. In particular, she has advocated a critical victimology that takes seriously the need for the (sub)discipline to be based on empirical, objective research and to take close account of the structural context in which it is operating, but at the same time to do this without losing the real insights and strengths that can be offered by an interpretive understanding. A key issue here seems to be the need to deﬁne what is the ‘real’ and to examine the processes which help provide an understanding of everyday reality. This issue is highlighted partly to take account of the fact that it is quite possible for victims not to know about their victimization and, therefore, the causes of it. It is for this reason that critical victimology advocates the need to examine the processes which ‘go on behind our backs’ in the context of deﬁning victims. Critical victimology problematizes the relationship between the citizen and the state, it does not see the state as neutral, rather its mechanisms contribute to those victims we see and those we do not see. It is therefore not objective but self interested and self motivated. This, according to critical victimology, raises problems in relation to race, gender and class and how they are articulated in policy terms. This theoretical approach to or reﬁnement of critical victimology, developed by Mawby and Walkate (1994) amongst others, draws upon Giddens’ (1984) theory of structuration in highlighting the importance of both macro and micro analysis – of structure and agency, as Giddens terms it. Structuration, as emphasized throughout critical victimology, allows the victim a voice. Critical victimology highlights the importance of peoples’ ability to ﬁght for themselves against their structural constraints, and quite often with surprising results. Deserving and undeserving victims These theoretical ideas have found their way into the world of the media, who have the power to socially construct the idea of the victim. The idea of the deserving and undeserving victim is a theme often found in media discourse, and ideas around morality are passed on almost unconsciously from the pages of newspapers and television reporting. Louis Althusser (1969) argued that our desires, values, and preferences are not innate but rather they are learned through ideological practice. We receive our ideological practice through what he termed ‘ideological state apparatuses’, such as the family, the education system and the media. His argument can be said to be closely related to the idea of propaganda. Alternatively, social psychological theories explore the role of the media in providing information to its audience; although a general theory of human behaviour, social learning theory, for example, has been used by theorists who are concerned with media effects. Albert Bandura (1963), for example, warned that ‘children and adults acquire attitudes, emotional responses, and new styles of conduct through ﬁlmed and television modelling’. 104

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The focus on the victim within media discourse is not merely to highlight society’s moral code. Wherever a victim exists a crime has been perpetrated; and crime stories are the biggest sellers across the media, in ﬁlms, on television, in the press and in books. Indeed, the idea that ‘if it bleeds it leads’ is often an accurate description of the way in which news is deemed as ‘newsworthy’. The idea of the victim is compelling and ultimately television ratings and newspaper sales often rely upon the regularly gruesome descriptions of victims of crimes. It can be argued that society in general and victimology as an academic discipline have managed to socially construct the idea of the deserving and undeserving victim. Feminist theorists have been particularly critical of positivist victimology and its attempts to cite the victim’s role as a causal factor in his or her victimization. Through the use of such terms as victim precipitation, culpability and proneness, positivist or traditional victimology has created the idea of the deserving and undeserving victim.

QUESTION BREAK What sort of victims might be seen as deserving and undeserving? How does the media differentiate between the deserving and undeserving victim?

Victims of child abuse are most obviously and strongly presented by the media as deserving victims – for instance, recent tragedies such as that of the murder of Victoria Climbie in 2000, who was a victim of child abuse at the hands of her greataunt and her boyfriend. In this case, the media portrayed the tragic circumstances of her life, evoking sympathy – she was the ultimate innocent, a trusting vulnerable child, as the extract from the BBC News coverage illustrates. Girl, 8, ‘tortured’ to death An eight-year-old girl, brought to England for a better life, died after suffering serious cruelty and neglect, a court has heard. Anna Climbie was beaten, burned with cigarettes and forced to sleep in a bin liner inside an empty bath, the jury at the Old Bailey was told. She died in hospital in February, suffering from hypothermia and malnutrition … A post mortem revealed 128 separate scars on her body including burns. (www.news.bbc.co.uk, BBC News, 22 November 2000) In an interesting study of the changes in the press coverage of child murders over the period 1930–2000, Wardle (2007) examined the visual representation of a number of high-proﬁle child murders. She found that the content of the visuals changed over that period, from emphasizing the role of the criminal justice 105

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system in capturing and bringing to justice the murderers to a much greater focus on victims’ families and the wider grief and emotions shown from society as a whole in recent years. Wardle starts by highlighting the massive media interest in crime news in general and the inﬂuence that media coverage can have on the public’s understanding of crime. Without going into the role of and theory behind visual images and representations, it is clear that photographs can capture and help to create reality. Wardle found that the coverage of child murders increased over the period she was studying and that in the earlier part of this period, up to the 1960s, child abductions and murders were typically described as isolated and motiveless, whereas by the 1990s the sexual motives of the offenders were given greater prominence alongside the notion of ‘predatory paedophiles’ stalking communities. She also noted a change from photographs of the offender being the most regularly used images to photographs of the victim and victims’ families being most common. Also, by the end of the twentieth century, photographs of public protests against paedophiles and of public displays of grieving were routinely used by newspapers.

QUESTION BREAK Look at recent media coverage of murder cases – how many use photographs of the victims? How would you describe those pictures?

With regard to the increased use of photographs of victims and their families, these photographs tend to be taken from past family album shots placed alongside contemporary pictures of grieving family members. By the 1990s, all of the newspapers looked at by Wardle tended to publish pictures of the victim as part of a loving family, in a way that, as she puts it: Further underlined the tragedy of the crime by forcing readers to identify with the idyllic family album photographs, and to place themselves as part of the grieving family. Wardle also makes the point that children are not just represented in one manner – as innocent victims, but that they can also be shown as ‘undeserving victims’. As well as being in danger, children are also seen as dangerous themselves; and she refers to Jewkes’ (2004) comment that children can be represented at either end of a spectrum, as ‘tragic victims’ or, when offending themselves, as ‘evil monsters’. So far, in considering deserving or undeserving as categories of the way the media represents victims of crime, we have focused on child victims. However, in looking at women as victims of crime there has been some debate as to the differential portrayal of women victims according to their occupation and/or status – in particular the 106

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way that prostitutes who are victims of crime are represented in the media. And this raises another aspect of the deserving/undeserving distinction – gender bias. Marian Meyers (1997) argues that a gender bias exists within media reporting of male and female victims. Moreover, there is a fundamental difference between the ‘innocent’ and ‘guilty’ victim which feeds into the positivist concept of victim precipitation discussed earlier. Meyers goes as far as to suggest that the portrayal of female victims is ‘… a function of an underlying male supremacy that separates women into virgin/whore or good girl/bad girl categories based on cultural stereotypes, myths and assumptions regarding the proper role of women’ (Meyers 1997). Meyers further develops this dichotomy by stating that the innocent victim is cast in the vulnerable role whereas the guilty victim is held ‘responsible for their status’. In analysing media responses, Meyers found that victims who were deemed as being wholly deserving of their victim status were typically very young or old and had often been tortured or murdered in a gruesome manner. This obviously taps into society’s ideas around mental and physical vulnerability evoking sympathy. Visual and verbal cues were used to describe the frailty in comparison to the attacker; and neighbours and friends were called upon to comment on the innocence of the victim. Those not in the vulnerable group were cast as in some way responsible for their own suffering. They were often described as drunk at the time of the incident, not cautious enough, involved in questionable activities or in behaviour outside of their traditional role. Meyers makes the point that in some crimes there seems to be a greater interest in considering the victims’ position and role than in others. As she puts it: There is an interest in looking for the ‘reasons’ why a victim was beaten. That is similar to asking why a woman was raped, unlike in other crimes – for example, do people ask why a person was robbed? (Meyers 1997) As mentioned, the idea of women victims being portrayed as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’, ‘whores’ or ‘angels’, is particularly apparent in the way the media reports crime against prostitutes – as the reporting of the recent murders of ﬁve women in Ipswich, Suffolk illustrates (the media coverage of the ‘Suffolk rapist’ is also discussed on pp. 11–13). In December 2006, the dead bodies of ﬁve women where discovered near and around the town of Ipswich in Suffolk. Media portrayal immediately focused on the fact that these women were prostitutes. Discourses around the case focused on the fact that the many of the women where drug abusers and had sex with men to feed their habit – this obviously fed into the notion that these women’s lives were somehow less valuable and ultimately that they were in part responsible and even culpable for their deaths. The style of popular journalism used to report the crimes in both the press and television led to a deluge of moral judgements. The past lives of the prostitutes became public property and were meticulously chronicled by the press. The prostitutes were distinguished from ‘other’ young women and consequently their evident ‘culpability’ raised. 107

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An article in the Daily Mail, for example, stated: We do not share in the responsibility for either their grubby little existences or their murders. Society isn’t to blame. It might not be fashionable, or even acceptable in some quarters, to say so, but in their chosen ﬁeld of ‘work’, death by strangulation is an occupational hazard. (18 December 2006) Even when reporting the sentencing of Wright for the murders in Ipswich, The Sun began its coverage with the comment, ‘Serial killer Steve Wright today faces life behind bars for throttling ﬁve hookers …’ (The Sun, 22 February 2008). Although the reporting focused on Wright’s background, that ﬁrst sentence does suggest that the victims are perhaps not as deserving or innocent as other victims may be. The coverage of the Ipswich prostitutes resembled the case of the Yorkshire Ripper 30 years earlier in which detective Jim Hobson said: ‘He (the Ripper) has made it clear that he hates prostitutes. Many people do. But the Ripper is now killing innocent girls’. An article dating from the time of the Yorkshire Ripper stated that, ‘the police describe the ﬁrst two women as having “loose” morals and although both told us that they rejected that description, the sad truth is that they made themselves vulnerable’ (Sunday Times, 1980). Of course, the reporting of the Ipswich prostitutes rested upon the fact that these women lived their lives outside of women’s traditional role and therefore did not deserve the protection and sympathy that is usually evoked by the reporting of other victims.

QUESTION BREAK Look at the examples of the reporting of murders of prostitutes. He has murdered the ﬁve prostitutes – all were heroin addicts and three were mothers – in less than six weeks … The bodies of three other vice girls – Gemma Adams, 25, Tania Nicol, 19, and Anneli Alderton, 24 – have been found over the past ten days. (The Sun, 13 December 2006) The ﬁve women murdered in Ipswich were tragic, lost souls who met a grisly end … No one with a shred of humanity would wish upon them their ghastly lives and horrible deaths. But Mother Teresa, they weren’t … Frankly, I’m tired of the lame excuses about how they fell victim to ruthless pimps who plied them with drugs. These women were on the streets because they wanted to be. We are all capable of free will. At any time,

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one or all of them could have sought help from the police, or the church or a charity, or a government agency speciﬁcally established to deal with heroin addicts. They chose not to. (Littlejohn R., ‘Spare us the “People’s Prostitute” Routine’, Daily Mail, 18 December 2006) ‘During the 1970s and into 1980, Sutcliffe killed 13 women and left seven others for dead. The body of his ﬁrst victim – 28-year-old Wilma McCann – was discovered in 1975, and, from the beginning, the West Yorkshire police were guilty of dragging their feet and bungling the investigation. Complacent police ofﬁcers overlooked vital clues, and inadequate technology was used to collate the thousands of interviews and intelligence. Amidst all this, Sutcliffe just kept killing – with hammers, screwdrivers and knives – and police were no further forward by the time the body of his ﬁfth victim, Jayne MacDonald, was discovered in 1977. MacDonald’s murder was described by police and press as a ‘tragic mistake’. The previous victims had all been prostitutes, and therefore, in the eyes of many, complicit in their own demise. MacDonald was 16 though, and described by the police as ‘respectable and innocent’. Victims were duly divided into deserving and not-so-deserving victims. (Bindel J., ‘Terror on our Streets’, The Guardian, 13 December 2006)

QUESTION What phrases do you think suggest that the victims in these crimes were perhaps to blame for their victimization and/or were less deserving of sympathy?

In considering the media reporting of victims, the US organization, The National Center for Victims of Crime, points out that the media can inﬂict ‘second victimization’ on some victims by exacerbating their feelings of violation. This can occur in a number of ways, by searching for and reporting anything ‘negative’ about the victim, by inappropriately delving into the victims’ past and attempting to interview victims at inappropriate times, such as during trials, or at funerals or in hospital settings. It is important to bear in mind that the great majority of crime victims will never have dealt with the news media; they are likely to be thrown into the limelight against their will because of crimes committed against themselves (or family members or friends in the case of secondary victims). And in high proﬁle cases the media coverage will be more intrusive and, potentially, distressing to the victim(s) – perhaps particularly when a combination of media sources are competing for scoops about the story. Indeed, the pressure to get a story can lead journalists to be overly aggressive to victims and their relatives. Another way 109

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in which the media can make things worse for victims is through the way that crime stories are presented – for instance, through ﬁlming or photographing bodies and body bags or through ﬁlm footage of the crime and crime scene as a lead-in to a news item. It is clear that one of the main issues relating to the media coverage of victims is the issue of secondary victimization. Kate Mulley (2001) states that the way that the ‘media interest is often experienced as a form of secondary victimization and can make individuals feels harassed, vulnerable, lacking in control and that their privacy has been violated’. Mulley also makes the point that many victims of crime just do not want their photographs or names to be published; at the moment anonymity is only guaranteed to child witnesses or when the person is a victim of rape or a sex offence. Partly in response to these kinds of secondary victimization, the National Center for Victims of Crime (NCVC) in the USA has developed and published guidelines for crime victims who are interviewed on television talk shows and a suggested code of ethics for victim advocates in the media. The positive inﬂuence of the media As stated earlier, the media can be one of the most powerful tools and their potential for good must not be understated. The media in all its forms reaches a massive audience on a daily basis and news and messages and important information are exchanged. For the victims of crime this can aid their recovery and allow them to utilize the media. In her discussion of the way the media can further victimize victims, Mulley (2001) also mentions some positive aspects of media coverage of crime. Some victims and witnesses can and do derive a degree of comfort from media interest; talking to the media can help victims feel they are doing something to help with the investigation of the crime. And as Mulley puts it, ‘Some individuals need to express their feelings and convey the hurt and anguish they have suffered. Others will want to tell their side of the story … or they may believe they want to set the record straight … Another strong motivation for cooperating with media interest is altruistic: to help and give strength to others who may have suffered a similar experience’ (p. 30). It might be said that the media wields a double-edged sword in relation to the coverage of crime victims. Victims can be those either directly or indirectly affected by crime – and in those cases where the direct victims are dead, other ‘victims’ can include members of the dead person’s family and social networks. On the one hand, media attention can further traumatize victims; once thrust into the public eye media coverage can often be unsympathetic, voyeuristic and psychologically damaging. However, for some the role of the media can be a positive inﬂuence. Victims may ﬁnd that dealing with the media can be therapeutic at a time when they are suffering great loss and sadness. The media can draw attention to speciﬁc issues, such as highlighting victims’ rights and even inﬂuencing government policy. The media can also provide a forum for the dissemination and exchange of important information, as in the case of missing children, for example. In the US, for instance, the news media have played a signiﬁcant role in promoting reform to 110

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the juvenile justice system that has included greater victim involvement in court proceedings. The relationship between the media and victims of crime provides a potentially awkward and volatile mix – there are people doing their job as journalists talking with and interviewing people who are in the depths of despair. And these victims, especially in the cases of the most serious crime, will be living what seems to them a nightmare that they have suddenly been thrust into, unprepared and in a completely random manner. However, most victims do seem to accept that the media have a role to play and that some degree of media intrusion is inevitable. One of the most renowned cases where secondary victims used the media to help change the legal system was that of Sarah Payne, who was abducted and murdered by known paedophile Roy William Whiting in July 2000. In response to her disappearance, the British media took up the campaign to highlight the issue. The public were bombarded with Sarah’s image and her parents used news conferences and appeals to try to bring their daughter back safely. Unfortunately, Sarah was found dead three weeks later but this did not lessen the media and, in turn, the public’s interest. The News of the World spearheaded a campaign which called for ‘Sarah’s Law’, a law that would give all parents controlled access to the sex offenders’ register. The parents also appeared on high proﬁle chat shows such as ‘This Morning with Richard and Judy’ to gather public support for such a law. This echoed to some extent the role of the media in the US after the murder of Megan Kanka in 1994 – media exposure of sex offenders being supervised in the community led to the passing of ‘Megan’s Law’, which required sex offenders to be registered and for information about their location to be made available to relevant communities. More recently, the media has been utilized in a similar way by the parents of Madeleine McCann, allegedly abducted in the resort of Prez de Luz in Portugal in 2007. The media campaign for the return of Madeleine has involved appeals for her safe return from celebrities such as David Beckham. In the hunt for Madeleine the world wide web has also played an important part. There is a dedicated ofﬁcial web site, www.ﬁndmadeliene.com, which shows images of Madeleine McCann and even allows her father Gerry McCann to write a blog on his and his wife’s personal feelings. The site also allows those who want to make a donation to a fund, which, at the time of writing, has received in excess of 1 million pounds. The sight attracted 25 million hits in its ﬁrst day. Calum Macrae, Director of Infohost, said: ‘In all my years in this business, I’ve never experienced anything like it. It’s unbelievable. As the media hype spreads further and further across the globe, more and more people are visiting and posting messages’ (Times, 18 May 2007). This case highlights the role of the most rapidly growing form of media today, the World Wide Web. There are thousands of web sites that provide information and referral services for victims of crime – including online counselling services and sites that link victims with appropriate professionals. However, media campaigns can backﬁre. In the case of Madeleine McCann, the media accounts have included suspicions and accusations about the parents. Indeed, two national newspapers, the Daily Express and The Daily Star, had to make front page apologies to Kate and Gerry McCann (and make substantial payments to the 111

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fund set up to ﬁnd the missing girl) for suggesting that they caused Madeleine’s death and then covered it up. The apology in the Daily Express is shown below: Kate and Gerry McCann: Sorry The Daily Express today takes the unprecedented step of making a front-page apology to Kate and Gerry McCann. We do so because we accept that a number of articles in the newspaper have suggested that the couple caused the death of their missing daughter Madeleine and then covered it up. We acknowledge that there is no evidence whatsoever to support this theory and that Kate and Gerry are completely innocent of any involvement in their daughter’s disappearance. We trust that the suspicion that has clouded their lives for many months will soon be lifted. As an expression of its regret, the Daily Express has now paid a very substantial sum into the Madeleine Fund. We promise to do all in our power to help efforts to ﬁnd her. Kate and Gerry, we are truly sorry to have added to your distress. We assure you that we hope that Madeleine will one day be found alive and well and will be restored to her loving family. (Daily Express, 19 March 2008) As a ﬁnal comment on the positive inﬂuence and impact of the media in relation to victims of crime, we will refer brieﬂy to the media’s role in uncovering miscarriages of justice. Although not directly victims of crime, those who have been wrongly convicted of crimes could be seen as victims of the criminal justice processes and system. For the media, miscarriages of justice are seen as representing an innocent person being convicted of a crime they did not commit; usually the media presentation of such miscarriages includes a call for the legal system to remedy the injustice. Indeed, with the uncovering of a number of high proﬁle miscarriages of justice in the 1980s and beyond, such as the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four, Judith Ward and Stefan Kisko to name a few, the media represented the legal system in this country as being in crisis. The media role in these (in)famous cases is interesting in that initially there was generally a massive initial media interest in ﬁnding the offenders of the particular crime and in putting pressure on the police to come up with a suspect: In cases like the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four, the media initially played a signiﬁcant role in fanning the lynch mob-style atmosphere that resulted in the convictions. (Donovan P., The New Statesman, 15 November 2007) However, after this interest, the media played a major role in uncovering and publicizing the miscarriages of justice, with programmes like Rough Justice (BBC) and Trial and Error (Channel 4) campaigning for cases to go to the Appeal Court. As well as the press and television programmes, organizations and pressure groups campaigning against miscarriages of justice also make use of the internet and World Wide Web. For example, Innocent is a Manchester-based organization that supports and campaigns for innocent people in prison. Its web site aims to raise people’s 112

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awareness of miscarriages of justice and provides copies of media articles and books that deal with such miscarriages. Groups victimized by the media Ethnic minorities as victims

It is well established that people from ethnic minority groups are more at risk of being the victim of crime than white people. In 2002/2003, adults from an Asian or mixed race background were more likely than those from other ethnic groups to be victims of crime in England and Wales – almost half (46%) of adults of mixed race had been victims within the previous 12 months, compared to 30% of Asians and 25% of the white and black populations (British Crime Survey 2004). In this section, we will consider how victims of crime from minority groups are represented by the media. It has been suggested that the portrayal of victims by the press is subject to certain prejudices – issues of race, class, sexuality, occupation and even attractiveness may affect the type, length and style of media coverage. Indeed, Sir Ian Blair, Metropolitan Police Chief Constable, accused the media of institutional racism in a statement in 2006. Taking two crimes as examples, Ian Blair highlighted the inconsistencies in the coverage of the murders of a white lawyer Tom ap Rhys Pryce and the Asian builders merchant Baliir Matharu. Both men where killed on the same day in brutal circumstances. Mr Matharu was mown down by a car after challenging two thieves who had broken into his van – he was dragged 40 meters. Mr Rhys Price was stabbed to death and mugged on his way home from Kensal Green tube station. Whilst both were cowardly and heinous crimes the story of Mr Rhys Price attracted much more media coverage. Sir Ian Blair went as far as to suggest ‘I actually believe that the media is guilty of institutional racism in the way they report deaths’. The Guardian itself analysed the content of the national press coverage of the two stories over a two-week period. This produced a result of 6,061 words for Mr Rhys Price and 1,385 words for Mr Matharu. Further The Guardian stated, ‘if only tabloid newspapers are analysed, the difference becomes clearer. The murder of Mr Rhys Price was mentioned in 98 stories while Mr Matharu’s death was covered in just 14’. (27 January 2006) Asylum seekers as victims

The British media has attracted criticism from the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights for their attitude towards the reporting of asylum seekers. Antonio Guterres, UN High Commissioner for Refugees and author of the report, states in an introduction to ‘Refugees: Victims of Intolerance’, UN High Commissioner, that asylum seekers are an easy target: In some countries, deliberate attempts to dehumanize asylum seekers are continuing, always presenting them as menacing statistics, as criminals and bringers of disease, or as some other form of generalized abstract aberration that 113

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is easy to hate … In an increasing number of countries, asylum seekers – and the refugees among them – have become a tool for political demagogues, or have been turned into faceless bogeymen by an unscrupulous popular press. (Guterres A., Victims of Intolerance, 1 April 2006, UN Refugee magazine) According to opinion polls, asylum continues to be one of the most important issues for the British public. Issues around asylum and asylum seekers are rarely out of the newspapers and are the subject of intense political and public debate. Reporting and commentary about asylum seekers and refugees is often hostile, unbalanced and factually incorrect. The extracts below are taken from The Refugee Council and look at the way the press use very negative terms to describe asylum seekers, such as ‘stampede’ and ‘crooked tide’; they contrast speciﬁc recent newspaper headlines with the actual facts about the issue being reported. The headline – ‘JET SET ASYLUM SEEKERS: £3K TO QUIT AND FLY BACK’ Daily Star, 1 May 2006 The facts – The Home Ofﬁce has for some time operated a scheme to support asylum seekers who voluntarily return to their country of origin. As a pilot, this has been increased to a possible total of £3,000 – but this is not all paid at once but in a series of grants as the individual shows that s/he requires support to set up in his/her country of origin – for example, they will often be homeless. It is not paid as cash and could not be used to ﬂy back to the UK. In the event of a second application for asylum, the asylum seeker would not be eligible for this support. Even if the maximum amount were paid out, it would be three or four times cheaper than an enforced removal. The headline – ‘ASYLUM CRISIS AS AMNESTY DEAL FOR 15,000 TURNS INTO STAMPEDE’ Daily Mail , 28 December 2005 The facts – There was no crisis. Applications for the amnesty are made in writing – no-one was stampeding anywhere. Since it was announced in October 2003, the Home Ofﬁce has found that more families are eligible for leave to remain than they had originally expected, having been in the UK awaiting an asylum decision for over three years. The headline – ‘ASYLUM SEEKERS SENT TO MORE AFFLUENT AREAS’ Daily Mail, 23 December 2005 The facts – The reality is that most asylum seekers’ accommodation is in ‘ghettos’ in deprived areas. They are housed in poor quality accommodation – often previously hard to let – sometimes in areas where research has shown they are more likely to face racial harassment. A Home Ofﬁce report looking at the problems 114

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caused said there might be a case for changing the policy so that some asylum seekers would be sent to relatively less problematic areas. The headline – ‘BRITAIN IS THE ASYLUM CAPITAL OF THE WORLD’ The Daily Express, 23 March 2005 The facts – The UK is home to just 3% of nearly 9.2 million refugees worldwide. Two thirds of the world’s refugees are living in developing countries, often in refugee camps. Africa and Asia between them host over 70% of the world’s refugees while Europe looks after just 22%. In 2005, the UK ranked 14th in the league table of EU countries for the number of asylum applications per head of population. The headline – ‘HALT THIS CROOKED TIDE’ The News of the World , 30 January 2005 The facts – A report by the Association of Chief Police Ofﬁcers stated that the ‘vast majority of people seeking asylum are law abiding citizens’. In fact, asylum seekers are much more likely to be the victims of crime than the perpetrators. A study conducted by Refugee Action found that one in ﬁve of their clients had experienced some kind of harassment while 83% of asylum seeking women do not go out at night for fear of being abused and harassed. The headline – ‘ASYLUM SEEKERS GIVEN VOTES TO GET LOANS’ Mail on Sunday, 1 May 2005 The facts – Asylum seekers are not allowed to vote in local or general elections in the UK, nor do they have any access to loans. People can only register on the electoral roll if they are British, Commonwealth, Irish or EU citizens. Far from getting extra help, asylum seekers receive just 70% of income support (£40 per week). They are not allowed work so are forced to live in poverty. In 2002, a joint Refugee Council/Oxfam report found that 85% of organisations working with asylum seekers said their clients experienced hunger while 95% said they could not afford clothes or shoes. The headline – ‘MIGRANT HEALTH THREAT TO BRITAIN’ The Daily Express, 22 April 2005 The facts – The claim that asylum seekers are bringing in disease to the country is a primitive response to outsiders coming in. In September 2003, a pilot screening project conducted by the Immigration Service found that after testing 5,000 asylum seekers for infectious diseases, none carried TB, HIV or AIDS, nor any other serious diseases. Doctors did, however, ﬁnd evidence of maltreatment and torture. 115

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QUESTION BREAK Rewrite the seven newspaper headlines listed in the previous section to reﬂect more accurately the facts reported about asylum seekers. Look at the extract from Steve James’ article below and highlight which parts or phrases refer to ‘undeserving’ and which to ‘deserving’ victims. UN criticises British media for scapegoating refugees Twice this year, Britain’s political establishment and media have attracted criticism from the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights for their attitude towards asylum seekers … The UNHCR was moved to complain against the scapegoating of immigrants in Britain, particularly by the national media. Referring to recent attacks on asylum seekers in Glasgow, which culminated in the murder of Kurdish immigrant Firsat Yildiz, UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski said there was ‘a linkage between the notoriously negative portrayal of asylum-seekers in the media and this kind of violence … “asylum-seekers” and “refugee” have even become a term of abuse in school playgrounds …’ Despite the volatile racial and social tensions in the area after the killing, Scotland’s Daily Record tabloid launched a witch-hunt against the dead man, and any who protested his killing … On August 7, the paper led with a banner headline ‘Madness – Refugees Bring Chaos to Glasgow’, referring to the protest march held by asylum seekers against the racist killing, which was followed by a xenophobic counter-demonstration. The next day, the Record went even further, effectively legitimizing Firsat’s murder on the grounds that he had lied to the immigration authorities. ‘Turk stabbing victim conned his way in an asylum seeker – The young Kurd killed in Glasgow was NOT a refugee who ﬂed Turkey because of his political beliefs. He was a fruit and veg trader trying to build a better life in Britain’, the Record alleged. It claimed that Firsat ‘was a conman who came to this country to make a fast buck … we should not be blinded by political correctness’. … The Record then moved on to target those who defended the rights of asylum seekers. On August 9, the Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees (CWR) held a demonstration outside the Record ’s ofﬁces … In a hysterical, full page editorial on August 10 entitled, ‘Read this Scotland and Weep’, the Record railed against those who were protesting its coverage. ‘There are some political extremists who try to make capital out of any situation …’ the paper opined, in what was in fact a more accurate description of the tabloid’s own activities … The Daily Record is not alone. Last month, Richard Littlejohn, a columnist in The Sun, Rupert Murdoch’s daily tabloid, published a particularly vicious, racist novel entitled ‘To Hell in a Handcart’.

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Littlejohn’s tract celebrates the anti-liberal and populist prejudices of an imaginary ex-policeman, Mickey French, who kills a Romanian asylum seeker involved in a robbery on his home … The racist prejudices and crude stereotyping in Littlejohn’s ﬁrst work of ﬁction can be read each week in his column in The Sun parading as fact. (From James S., ‘UN criticises British media for scapegoating refugees’, World Socialist Web, www.wsws.org, 2001)

The media, murder and secondary victims In this section we will look at how people who are related to or linked with murderers convicted of particularly serious and shocking crimes can be demonized and victimized by the media representation of them. This is especially the case where women are seen as supportive of their male partners, as the two examples we consider below demonstrate – ﬁrstly Maxine Carr, girlfriend of Ian Huntley, and then Sonia Sutcliffe, wife of Peter Sutcliffe. As an example of the power of the media in informing opinion and rendering some as victims of media attention, it is worth considering the media treatment of Maxine Carr more closely. In August 2002, Ian Huntley, a school caretaker, murdered two 10-year-old girls, Holly Chapman and Jessica Wells in the Cambridgeshire village of Soham. The case became one of the most high-proﬁle murder cases in terms of media attention and the attendant massive public interest in (initially) the search for the two girls. At the time Maxine Carr, Huntley’s girlfriend, provided him with a false alibi and later pleaded guilty to the charge of perverting the course of justice. During the trial, Carr became the most hated woman in Britain, and media attention on her reached fever pitch. Maxine Carr’s crime was a serious one, indeed she received a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence for it, but she had no role in the actual murder of the two girls. Nonetheless, her name has become synonymous with infamous female child murders such as Myra Hindley and Rose West. Indeed, press articles at the time likened Carr to Myra Hindley – despite the fact that she was not a murderer. In December 2003, The Sun and The Daily Express both reported on the fact that Carr’s inmates in Holloway prison, where she was on remand, had dubbed her ‘Myra Hindley mark II’, with her picture appearing alongside that of Myra Hindley. Also in December 2003, The Daily Express carried the headline ‘Sex-mad Maxine, the Myra of Soham’. On release from prison, Carr was given a new appearance and identity and a court injunction which prevents her whereabouts from being revealed to the media. And this action has itself excited interest and debate in the media decision; the different sides of the argument as to whether Carr should be supported in being given a ‘new life’ after completing her prison sentence are illustrated in the extract from the BBC news online service from 14 May 2004, the date of her release. 117

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QUESTION BREAK Read the opinions of the two journalists below and state which you ﬁnd most convincing. Give reasons for your answer. Head to head: Maxine Carr’s privacy As Maxine Carr ends her prison sentence for involvement in the Soham murders, the media is expected to challenge a court ban on publishing details about her new life. The Daily Mirror’s Sue Carroll and Independent columnist Deborah Orr explain their differing views on Carr’s right to privacy. Sue Carroll, Daily Mirror Everybody is interested in Maxine Carr. The whole of the media are interested, so let’s not pretend it’s just a tabloid story. People are very disappointed and a bit aggrieved because they feel that she was probably treated fairly leniently. She didn’t serve three-and-a-half years – that was accelerated … I do agree that there is a pick-and-mix law at the moment, it’s guess work, you don’t know what anybody is going to get for any crime, but the public would perceive that she’s been treated with kid gloves. I think that’s a fair point, I think she has … Nobody can invade her privacy, but she can invade her own because the story is that she is able tell her own story in her own words should she choose. I personally don’t want to read it. Deborah Orr, columnist for The Independent If people would just accept that Maxine Carr committed a crime, she’s now paid the price and now has to get on with her life, half of the anger that people feel would be immediately dissipated. I think people feel very angry at the idea that millions is going to be spent on keeping Maxine safe. All of this wouldn’t have to happen if people would just accept that she has spent some time in prison for what she did and now should be allowed to get on with her life … What has happened to Maxine Carr even before the criminal justice system became involved is absolutely horriﬁc. She will have to live with that for the rest of her life. She’s young now and her understanding of what she did is going to get deeper and worse as she gets older. She is going to suffer forever no matter what other people do. I think what has happened to her is appalling. She’s had her life taken away anyway without people running around shouting how she hasn’t been punished enough. What has happened to her in her life is punishment enough. (www.news.bbc.co.uk, 14 May 2004)

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Media attention on Maxine Carr has been and continues to be relentless. The image of Carr in the media (and an image that has largely been built by the media) is one of a selﬁsh, arrogant, sex mad liar and evil woman. In May 2004, The Daily Telegraph ran an article entitled ‘Leave us alone, say the other 17 Maxine Carrs’. The hysteria over Maxine Carr had led those on the electoral register who shared her name to be in fear of their safety. The article even stated ‘police forces up and down the country have prepared emergency measures to protect the namesakes, fearing that they could be attacked by vigilantes mistaking them for the former girlfriend of Ian Huntley, the man who murdered Jessica and Holly.’ As mentioned above, her release from prison after serving 21 months (16 months of which were while she was on remand before trial) of a three-and-a-half-year sentence was widely criticized by the tabloid press. The Sun had successfully campaigned to ensure that Carr was not released earlier in 2004, congratulating itself with the headline ‘Keeping Carr caged is a victory for us all’, and commenting that the blocking of Maxine Carr’s bid for early release was ‘a huge victory for The Sun and its army of readers, who overwhelmingly voted in our “You The Jury” poll that she should serve her full sentence for lying to police about Ian Huntley and his role in the murder of ten-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman’. It concluded, ‘thank goodness justice and common sense have prevailed and Maxine Carr has been refused early release from prison’. Much of the media portrayal has focused on the unthinkable idea that a woman should be associated with violence and abuse towards children. The role of her gender has played an important role in Carr’s victimization. Stereotypical views of women and their feminine sensitive nature, compared to the animalism of man, have been used to illustrate Maxine Carr’s extraordinary nature. In 2003, investigative journalist Nathan Yates launched his exposé on Ian Huntley aptly titled ‘Beyond Evil’; his portrayal of Carr illustrates theses stereotypical attitudes to women offenders. This view and the counter argument that women offenders are demonized in a way that does not apply to all offenders are illustrated in the two extracts below. These extracts are lengthy but provide good examples of the excessive, if not obsessive, way that media coverage can increase the victimization of someone who had committed a crime but had served her punishment (they are included in the question break below).

QUESTION BREAK Read the two extracts and consider the questions below them. The ﬁrst is from a book by journalist Nathaniel Yates and the second from an article by Jo Knowles in the F-word online magazine, which was established in 2001 and considers issues pertinent to contemporary UK feminism. ‘BEYOND EVIL: MAXINE WOULD CRY OUT FOR SEX’ DESPERATE Maxine Carr would do anything to get a man. Filled with self-loathing, she would punish herself through starvation and sleep with anyone who asked in the hope that they might stay with her.

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The woman who would give her boyfriend an alibi for double child murder was born Maxine Ann Capp on February 16, 1977 in Grimsby maternity hospital. From birth she was isolated from the rest of her family, being by far the younger of two girls. Many who knew her believed this loneliness was the product of her difﬁcult relationship with her father, Alfred Edward Capp. Described on his daughter’s birth certiﬁcate as a farm worker, he lived with her mother, Shirley Catherine Capp (nee Suddaby) in a small terrace house in Yarborough Road in the village of Keelby. But by the time Carr was two-and-a-half, Alfred had split from his wife and he would play little part in the lives of his children. It seems he resented that Shirley had ordered him out of the house, and he decided to cut himself off completely from her and the girls. From an early age, Carr felt anger towards her absent father, blaming him for all the ills in her life and in the lives of her mother and sister. The little girl felt rejected and was already prone to severe mood swings … It was around puberty that Carr’s troubles erupted. She became acutely aware of the opposite sex. As she reached 13, she felt insecure about her appearance. She thought she was unattractive to boys – too fat and spotty. The teenager became so unhappy she went on huge eating binges to try to bring herself some form of comfort. Carr ballooned in weight to 10 st. and when she was 15 she began making herself vomit after eating. A year later, the bulimia had turned into a habit of self-starvation. Carr became anorexic. Shirley was in despair at her younger daughter’s condition. Carr became so ill that she needed hospital treatment. A former classmate said: ‘Boys called her names because she was fat. When she got ill, she was a lot thinner but then people used to call her “The Skeleton” ’. Carr battled through her GCSEs, achieving seven passes and aimed to be a teacher … One of her ﬁrst boyfriends was scaffolder Paul Selby, 25. She met him in 1997; she was 19 at the time but told him she was 23. At this time her favourite way out of her repressed character was to drink vodka and coke – downing more than a dozen in a night. Paul said: ‘After a couple of drinks, she’d get up on the tables and start dancing and ﬂashing her boobs.’ … Her favourite pubs were frequented by young people out to meet a partner for the night. Carr would happily go home with most men who expressed an interest in her. One of the many who had a ﬂing with Carr said: ‘She asked me if I’d take her back to bed. She was drunk and not my type but I’d had a few and I just went along with it’.

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Though desperate for a steady partner, she found it impossible to resist one-night-stands … Yet all this physical passion never led to any real feeling. She would just roll over, fall asleep and in the morning say: “Bye, then, are you off now?” Given her strange habits, it is perhaps unsurprising that Carr found it difﬁcult to hang on to her men … But Carr remained in desperate need of a man she could at last lean on. Her chance ﬁnally came when she and Huntley were ﬂung together at a club during a pub crawl in the summer of 1998. Carr was out for the night with her former boyfriend Paul Selby and a group of his friends. Huntley saw Carr and zeroed in. The attraction was instant. Carr was bowled over by this seemingly charming, yet arrogant man. Before the night was over, they were having sex. Carr soon jumped at the chance to move in with a man who seemed to provide her with the security she had craved … They eventually sought a new life by moving to East Anglia, where Huntley learned, through his father, of a caretaker’s job available at a school in a little village called Soham. And there, by the summer of 2002, Huntley and Carr had achieved an appearance of normality and stability.’ (Yates N. 2003) Crime and Punishment: Maxine Carr and other “evil women” Maxine Carr is currently the ‘most hated woman in Britain’. There’s a strong case for saying she’s the most hated person in Britain, but woman seems to be the favoured word. This tells us a number of things about why there is such strong hatred being expressed for Carr, who as I write has just been released from her prison sentence on parole, into the care of parole ofﬁcers. Police ofﬁcers have apparently advised Carr to wear a bullet-proof vest, such is the risk of someone trying to harm her … The media treatment of Maxine Carr is worth considering more closely as part of a feminist awareness of discrimination and prejudice against her as a representative of women associated with, or accused of, violent acts. My view is that Carr is receiving extreme and unusual treatment because she is a woman, and that this has wider implications for all women in Britain in terms of how we are or might be treated as convicted or suspected criminals. On 13th May, the day before Carr’s projected release, GMTV ran a feature on the rights and wrongs of this, with a Daily Mirror columnist, Sue Carroll, as the guest of hosts Fiona Phillips and Eamonn Holmes … (At one stage) Eamonn Holmes helpfully chipped in about Carr that “She’s had numerous boyfriends, too”. Aha, I thought, at last we come to that old chestnut: a woman who’s had numerous (anyone want to estimate what number is actually intended by ‘numerous’? More than one?)

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boyfriends is obviously what would once have been called a ‘person of low moral ﬁbre’, evidently capable of all sorts of other unspeakable horrors. Sexual women = evil women, though it’s the ﬁrst time I’ve seen this used as a excuse to lock someone up indeﬁnitely since I last read a Victorian novel. This demonization of Carr has been going on since she and Ian Huntley were charged with their respective crimes. What disturbs me about this is the creeping increase of attributed responsibility on Carr’s part for things done by Huntley. Fiona Phillips suggested during the GMTV discussion that people’s anger over the murders was displaced onto Carr because Huntley will be permanently unreachable, whereas she will be free and, in some people’s eyes ‘getting away with it’ … One of the major issues when considering Carr’s guilt during the Soham trial was the unthinkable idea that a woman could be complicit in violence and abuse towards children … The nature of crimes involving children, especially where sexual abuse or murder are concerned, inevitably evoke strong reactions in the public; their perpetrators are probably the most unpopular group of criminals in existence. Huge attention is always focused on women involved in these cases, whether they are the grieving parent (such as Sara Payne, Sarah’s mother) or someone deemed to be complicit, such as Marie Therese Kouao, the aunt of murdered Victoria Climbie – or Maxine Carr. Extreme responses result, with one considered a heroine, one, perhaps understandably a monster. These views are derived from underlying beliefs that the worst thing that can happen to a mother is to lose her child, and that the potential for motherhood in all women makes them, or should make them, incapable of abusing a child or even of tolerating abuse. This, at least is the ideal. These polarized representations of womanhood are a legacy of the Victorian image of the Angel in the House, whose opposite is the demonic Fallen Woman. The logic behind the Fallen Woman is that one sin makes you capable of others, leading on and on to an ever more shocking chain of crimes. Thus little sins add up to big ones … This angel/demon dichotomy may be behind another timely announcement on women and crime. While Sue Carroll and other media columnists were making the cases for Carr being kept in prison indeﬁnitely, or at least for a lot longer, the Prison Reform Trust have stated that the number of women prisoners has now reached a record high, and described the devastating effects of women being imprisoned on their families … I can’t help thinking that the constant attention to Carr and the mediafuelled desire to punish her further is likely to hinder the cause of her female fellow prisoners. (Knowles J. June 2004 www.thefword.org.uk)

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QUESTIONS How would you describe the portrayal of Carr by Yates? What stereotypes does it uphold? Suggest some other examples of the ‘angel/demon’ dichotomy

Another example of the way that women (especially) are victimized and demonized within the media is the press coverage of Sonia Sutcliffe, wife to Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper. Sutcliffe was arrested in 1980; however, years later Sonia Sutcliffe was still being ‘blamed’ for her husband’s crimes. In 1989, Sonia Sutcliffe was awarded damages of £600,000 against the satirical magazine Private Eye, after unsubstantiated claims that she had negotiated with the press so as to proﬁt from her fame as the wife of a serial killer and had sold her story to the Daily Mail for £250,000. Her lawyers said she had done no such deal and did not want to capitalize on her husband’s crimes. At the time, the sum of £600,000 was substantially larger than previous libel awards, and on appeal, and partly due to media-led public outrage over her gaining such a large amount of money, it was reduced to £60,000. More than a decade later, the Barrister John Upton described how the media portrayed Sonia Sutcliffe as a failure as a wife and consequently a direct cause of Peter Sutcliffe’s crimes. He referred to newspaper articles put forward at the time of Sutcliffe’s arrest that suggested she was a cause of her husband’s crimes, and that cited her: failings as a wife – her inadequacies as a sexual partner, her wish not to have children, her mental health difﬁculties – as the direct cause of his butchery. A women was expected in the eyes of the prurient, disapproving public not to just stand by her serial killer man but to stand in place of him. (Upton J., cited in Jewkes Y., Media and Crime, 2004 p. 115) The role of CCTV and surveillance in the representation of and support for victims In this section, we will consider the extent to which the massive expansion of media technologies, in the form of CCTV and other surveillance forms, have affected the portrayal of victims of crime. On one level, it might be argued that everyone is the ‘victim’ of surveillance. The UK seems to be the market leader in terms of levels of CCTV usage; according to McCahill and Norris (2003) there are 4.2 million cameras in Britain, one for every 14 people, and estimates have suggested that the average person in the UK is caught on CCTV cameras 300 times per day as they go about their daily lives. Indeed, we are watched everywhere we go, driving to work, shopping, taking a train and so on; we are under surveillance not just from cameras, but by the chips in our credit, debit and store cards. Our emails and telephone conversations can be monitored and tracked by a range of agencies and private 123

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companies. And we expect to be subject to new and more sophisticated means of surveillance, as the following extract from BBC News 24 illustrates: Talking CCTV scolds Offenders ‘Talking’ CCTV cameras that tell off people dropping litter or committing anti-social behaviour are to be extended to 20 areas across England. They are already used in Middlesbrough where people seen misbehaving can be told via a loudspeaker, controlled by control centre staff. (4 April 2007) On the other hand, CCTV footage showing people being victims of crime can help in providing evidence for court and in police investigations of crime. Indeed, governments have invested heavily in CCTV cameras as part of their crime-prevention programme. During the 1990s, the Home Ofﬁce spent 78% of its crime-prevention budget on surveillance (Gill and Spriggs 2005). The increased presence of (and awareness of ) CCTV cameras, and the fact that their evidence is often irrefutable, is also likely to deter would-be offenders from breaking the law.

THEORIZING SURVEILLANCE Surveillance within society can take varying forms, from DNA databases and identity cards to the use of CCTV cameras. In criminological theory (see the work of Foucault (1977) in particular) and classic twentieth century texts (such as George Orwell’s 1984), surveillance has been used to describe power dimensions within society and explain a growing trend towards totalitarianism. In his famous study, Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault highlighted the disciplinary potential of surveillance in his discussion of the panoptican: The perfect discipline apparatus would make it possible for a single gaze to see everything constantly. A central point would be both the source of light illuminating everything and a locus of convergence for everything that must be known: a perfect eye that nothing would escape and a center towards which all gazes would be turned. (Foucault 1977, p. 172) George Orwell wrote what might be considered the ﬁrst social science reference to a computer-based surveillance society in his book Nineteen Eighty Four. It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself – anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something 124

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to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face … was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime … (1984, Chapter 5)

QUESTION BREAK Surveillance and especially the use of CCTV has surpassed the levels that even Michel Foucault or George Orwell depicted. Using your own day-to-day life as a blueprint, explain how you are affected by the increased use of CCTV and other surveillance techniques. What are the positive and negative affects on your own life? Discuss the negative and positive impact of surveillance on criminal justice.

In terms of crime, theorists, politicians and criminal justice agencies have failed to agree on the role of CCTV cameras as a form of crime prevention – but one thing is certain, if your image is caught on camera whilst committing a crime then you are more likely to be caught and prosecuted. For victims, this has been welcomed as a positive development, whether people are victims of corporate crime or personal crime. We are all quite used to the grainy images of both victims and offenders caught on camera – Jill Dando’s last moments, for example, and Rodney King’s beating by the police in the US. Jill Dando was a television presenter who worked for the BBC for 14 years, and co-hosted the popular Crimewatch programme. She was murdered outside her London ﬂat in April 1999 and, as part of the investigation into her killing, police examined hundreds of hours of video footage of her movements in the hours before she was killed. In 1991, George Holliday videotaped the brutal beating of Rodney King by the LAPD police in Los Angles. The video showed four white police men kicking and repeatedly striking the black man whilst six other stood by and watched the violence. The evidence was shown internationally and King became the face of racism and police brutality. After the four policemen where acquitted, there was outrage throughout the city and this led to the LA riots of 1992. However, the most famous case to date, because of the nature of the crime itself, is that of the murder of James Bulger in Liverpool in 1993, James Bulger, a threeyear-old child, was abducted and killed by two ten-year-old boys. Whatever moral questions the Bulger case posed for late twentieth-century Britain one fact remains – the CCTV footage from the Bootle Strand Shopping Centre allowed the police to air James’s initial abduction from that shopping center to the murder scene, and thereby illustrated the identities of the perpetrators. This allowed the police to get on with the case much quicker than if they had had no information about the offenders – they had clear pictures of two children as the abductors rather than (as might have been suspected otherwise) an older paedophile. 125

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THE FRUSTRATION OF CCTV FOOTAGE One of the major problems with the use of CCTV in terms of victims is the fact that the image viewed is almost always and inevitably of past events; these events can therefore never be prevented. Indeed, this helps explain why the footage of Jill Dando, Rodney King and Jamie Bulger, among other examples, have become some of the most deeply ingrained news images of recent years. Part of this sense of helplessness that is felt when viewing images of horriﬁc crimes that have happened is illustrated by the comments from Jill Dando’s cousin, Judith, after viewing video clips of the last few hours of Jill’s life, which included showing her shopping in Dixon’s: The worst thing with seeing the ﬁlm clip of Jill’s last moments … was the fact that she was just going about the ordinary things that Jill did. And that you almost want to be able to stop the camera and stop the action and shout at her, ‘Jill, don’t go home!’ (Judith Dando, quoted in Burn, 2001) While it is a fact that Britain has the highest number of CCTV cameras in the West, this does not always mean that cameras are reliable – many do not work, or are so poor that they fail to capture the crime or criminal image. Even when cameras are working the images they capture may be deleted or disappear. On the 15th April 1989 the Hillsborough Stadium was the chosen venue for the FA cup semi-ﬁnal between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest football clubs. A build up of fans outside the stadium resulted in a crush that killed 96 Liverpool fans. The Taylor report into the ‘disaster’ pointed to a problem with police control. For the families of the victims the intervening years have been one of attempting to acquire justice for the victims – a task made more difﬁcult by the apparent loss of ﬁlmed evidence, as indicated by the comments in the Police Review journal: Hundreds of photographs were taken. A total of 71 hours of video material was recorded. On the night after the disaster, two video tapes were taken from the locked Shefﬁeld Wednesday camera room. Like all the Club’s tapes, they would have shown scenes outside the ground. They have not been recovered. The tapes from the police CCTV system were preserved. Tape TB1 (after the initials of the operating ofﬁcer) ran from noon to 3.04 pm. When the tape was full, the disaster was unfolding and, in the heat of the moment, Constable Bichard forgot to replace it until 3.34 pm. The theft of two Shefﬁeld Wednesday tapes, the break in continuity of one of the police recordings and Constable Bichard’s evidence that one of the police cameras was not operating properly, may have caused confusion. (The Freedom of Information Unit, South Yorkshire Police, Police Review, February 2005) Of course, the technology of surveillance is developing all the time and, in spite of the concerns and difﬁculties highlighted above, it is evident that CCTV and other forms of surveillance can and do help capture and convict offenders. However, as a ﬁnal 126

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comment, while CCTV cameras may record the daily routine of millions of people around the world, at present it is only the public world that is captured. Corporate crime and private crime, such as insider dealing and fraud, or domestic violence and, child abuse, for instance, are impossible to capture. CCTV cameras do not and cannot capture the plight of those whose victimhood remains invisible.

FURTHER READING Mawby R. and Walklate S. (1994) Critical Victimology: International Perspectives, London: Sage. A text that details the rise of victimology and provides a critical account of theoretical debates in the area. Meyers M. (1997) News Coverage of Violence Against Women: Engendering Blame, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Meyers argues that there is a gender bias in the media reporting of male and female victims and that there is a strong tendency to imply that some victims are ‘innocent’ and others ‘guilty’. Mulley K. (2001) ‘Victimized by the Media’, Criminal Justice Matters, 43:30–31. In this article, Mulley points out how the media harasses and intrudes on victims of crime.

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CHAPTER 6 ❚ Media portrayal of the police ❚ Media portrayal of the courts/legal system

The Media and the Criminal Justice System

❚ Media portrayal of prisons

In this chapter, we will move away from the media representation of crime and those involved in criminal behaviour, be they offenders, victims or even onlookers affected by the media presentations of crime (as in the cases of moral panics for instance). Here the focus is on the way that the media represent the criminal justice system, and in particular how the major criminal justice agencies are presented in our mass media. The discussion will consider the three major areas or stages of the criminal justice process and the enforcement of the law. First, the police and how they have been represented in the media, then the courts and sentencing and, ﬁnally, prisons. In each case, we will look at real life or factual representations and also at how these different areas of our criminal justice system and process are presented in ﬁctional accounts and presentations. It is not always easy to separate out what is fact from ﬁction – and ﬁctional programmes such as dramas and soap operas will usually try and make their ‘ﬁction’ as realistic as possible. As Mason (2003) puts it: ‘Audiences “commuting” between the realms of factual news and entertainment programming has implications for public perceptions of law enforcement agencies, the courts and prisons as well as offenders and victims’ (p. 5). As well as the massive interest the general public have with crime and criminals, there is also a deep fascination with how these crimes and criminals are discovered and dealt with by the criminal justice system – with how the police go about catching and charging offenders, with how the courts and judiciary sentence them and with what happens to those offenders who enter the penal system. Our criminal justice system is a massive operation. A few years ago, data from a Home Ofﬁce Report in 2001, Criminal Justice: The Way Ahead, showed that the police service deal with over 25,000 ‘999’ calls, make over 5,000 arrests and carry 128

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out 2,200 stop and searches every day; that over 4,400 people turn up to do jury service, 1,000 people to act as witnesses in our courts, with 5,600 defendants being sentenced each day (Levenson 2001). However, in spite of those quite dramatic ﬁgures, most people still only have a fairly limited experience of the criminal justice system and its workings. As with our knowledge and understanding of criminal behaviour, so our understanding of the criminal justice system is derived largely from the mass media we consume. As mentioned in previous chapters, crime stories are a staple of many forms of our media; these stories often focus on crimes that have reached the stage of getting to court. There is a tremendous interest in ‘who gets what’ from within our criminal justice system. And because the media will almost inevitably focus on the more spectacular crimes and those which lead to the most severe punishments, the picture portrayed by the media about law enforcement and punishment is liable to be distorted in a similar way. Therefore, much of the media coverage of punishment focuses on prisons, the most severe form of punishment available in our criminal justice system, even though the great majority of offenders who are sentenced do not receive prison sentences. After all, offenders being ﬁned is not likely to make such interesting reading or viewing as are stories and ﬁlms about imprisonment. While it is understandable that the media focuses on solved crimes, through covering the trials and courtroom drama, Leishman and Mason (2003) point out that this coverage can give the wider public the impression that most crime is solved and that the police are pretty effective in detecting crime – impressions which information on the actual clear up rates of all crimes committed demonstrates to be way off the mark. The crimes covered by the media are the more solvable sort of crimes because, as mentioned above, they are the more serious sorts of crime, such as murder and sexual offences. And these are the crimes which the police will usually solve – because they will spend considerable resources on high proﬁle and serious crimes and because such crimes are often relatively easy to solve as the offender (in the case of murder) will more often than not have had some previous association (and often a close association through marriage or family ties) with the victim. This sort of media coverage might reassure the public that the police are effective at catching criminals, but can also lead to criticism when they fail to solve crimes. However, Leishman and Mason make the point that, ‘the lack of emphasis in the media on unspectacular unrecorded, unsolved property crimes can be seen to let the police “off the hook” for underperformance in such areas’.

QUESTION BREAK 1. What role (if any) has the media played in developing your knowledge and understanding of the police, the court system and prison life? What part has ﬁctional media (in the form of ﬁlm, television, magazine, books, etc.) played in this process?

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2. Look at a couple of newspapers and watch a TV news broadcast. What crimes were covered by them? How many of the crimes involved the sentencing of offenders? How many of the sentences were imprisonment? Why do you think the media coverage of criminal behaviour often centres on what happens in court to offenders? Why might there be less coverage of crimes which do not reach court? The British Crime Survey (Kershaw et al. 2000) found that television or radio news was cited by most people (nearly three quarters of the population) as their major source of information about the criminal justice system, with newspapers also having a signiﬁcant impact. So it would seem fair to conclude that how the media portray the police, the courts and judiciary and our penal system will have a major inﬂuence on public knowledge and public opinion.

MEDIA PORTRAYAL OF THE POLICE In introducing his chapter on ‘policing and the media’ in the fourth edition of The Oxford Handbook of Criminology (2007), Robert Reiner, one of the foremost academic writers on the media and policing, highlights the collaborative nature of the relationship between the police and journalists and broadcasters. He cites the comment of Sir Robert Mark, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in the early 1970s, that the police and media relationship could be compared to ‘an enduring, if not ecstatically happy, marriage’. Reiner describes the relationship between the police and media as one of ‘mutual dependence and reciprocal reinforcement’. On the one hand, and as we have highlighted in introducing this chapter, the way that the criminal justice system, including and in particular the police, has dealt with offenders, has always been a signiﬁcant part of the mass media content, in both factual and entertainment contexts. Also, though the police are concerned with how they are portrayed by the media and, more speciﬁcally, with creating and encouraging a positive police media image, as they are aware that public support and cooperation will help them in enforcing the law. It is self-evident that in order to solve crimes the police need to collect relevant information; the public are one of the most important sources of information for the police when investigating crime. This is notably the case with regard to some of the more serious crimes, such as murder investigations, when the police make use of the media as part of their investigation strategy – for instance, through using the media to appeal for information that might help them solve the crime. Innes (2001) makes the point that the police can use the media as a means of mass communication for informing the general public that a crime has occurred and witnesses need to 130

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be identiﬁed. One of the earliest and longest running ‘reality TV’ programmes, Crimewatch, is based on this idea, but appeals to the public from bereaved victims and/or senior police ofﬁcers can also be made via newspapers. And these communications, whether through television or the press, are presented by the police in a way that they hope will persuade people to come forward with information – either as witnesses or perhaps through suspecting someone of an offence or being an acquaintance of an offender. This form of public appeal is relatively cheap and easy for the police to use as well as having, as Innes puts it, an ‘important symbolic function … (that is) important in producing a sense of public legitimacy for the institution of policing’. However, police use of the media in this way can cause difﬁculties – such appeals can generate an enormous amount of information, much of which will be irrelevant to the particular enquiry; they can also lead to an expectation that the particular case should be solved by the police. More seriously, there have been problems with media appeals where relatives of a victim have made a public appeal and later been found to have been involved in the offence itself (for instance, in the case of Tracey Andrews, who was found guilty, in 1997, of murdering her ﬁancé after claiming he had been killed in a ‘road rage’ attack and who had used the media to appeal for witnesses to this supposed road rage attack – see p. 79). As well as the collaborative relationship between police and the media, there are also overlaps and similarities between the job of a police ofﬁcer (and in particular a detective) and a journalist. Leishman and Mason (2003) provide a number of examples that make this point. Both jobs can involve working odd and long hours, pressure to get ‘results’ and a need to meet deadlines, and in both cases rules and regulations have to be followed which might get in the way of a ‘result’ – journalists have to work within laws of libel and contempt and police ofﬁcers within regulations governing the stopping, searching, arresting and so on of suspects. And while there might be a lot of bureaucratic and routine work for those employed in both areas, they are also faced with quite dramatic events in the course of their work. In addition, informants can and do play an important and useful role for journalists and police ofﬁcers. Leishman and Mason also look at the crossover that exists between the nature of police work and news gathering. In spite of some antagonism between the two professions, what the police do overlaps with what makes news, which ‘drives a sense of dependency between police and members of the media, uneasy though this may be at times’ (Leishman and Mason 2003, p. 31). The nature of the police media relationship has inevitably been affected by recent changes in the media industry, particularly by the technological developments that have enabled a massive increase in media outlets. The 24-hour continuous news programmes on satellite television have increased the demand for news stories and the time available to delve into such stories; as the police are an important source of news stories this has increased the media demands on them. Technological advances have also impacted on the accountability of the police. Mawby (2001) considers how the use of lightweight cameras, including on mobile phones, have increased the scrutiny which the police are subject to. For instance, amateur ﬁlming of the policing of demonstrations or police dealing with incidents can be used on news programmes and through the internet. In his examination of media images of policing, Mawby (2003) considers why these images matter. He cites Reiner’s categorization of media representations of 131

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policing (and law and order more generally) under the headings of either ‘hegemonic’ or ‘subversive’. The ﬁrst sees the police as being in a dominant position with regard to the media in that they can choose and ﬁlter the information they provide and the media treatment of the police can play an important role in fostering a positive and favourable image of the police. By contrast, the ‘subversive’ position suggests that the media can be a threat to authority and can undermine respect for the police; in the past it has done this by exposing police malpractice and corruption. For instance, in the late 1960s, when exposure of corruption in the Metropolitan police led to some of most senior police ofﬁcers in the country being imprisoned through to the reporting of ‘institutional racism’ in the police, highlighted by the Macpherson Report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence (1999). Mawby suggests that these quite distinct headings and positions indicate the importance of examining media images.

QUESTION BREAK Read the extract from The Guardian and look at the pictures of different styles of policing and consider the questions below. Yard Detectives jailed over drug racket Four Scotland Yard detectives were in jail last night after a female supergrass helped to uncover one of the worst cases of police corruption for over thirty years. The ofﬁcers, who seized drugs during police raids which were then passed on to criminals to sell on the streets, were last night branded a ‘disgrace’ by Scotland Yard. (The Guardian, 5 August 2000) Community policing – policing demonstrations

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How would you describe the styles of policing shown/illustrated in the three extracts? What effect might these images have on the public view of policing? How do they relate to Reiner’s categorization of ‘hegemony’ and ‘subversive’ representations of policing?

As we have seen, for many people the media, and particularly television, is how they ﬁnd out about the police. Policing is popular on television, with police programmes having attracted high viewing ﬁgures for many years (Mawby cites Frost and Heartbeat as being in the top ﬁve watched programmes in 1999). Police programmes can also inform the wider public about the nature and future of policing; they can, to quote Mawby: ‘fulﬁl a symbolic role, providing a commentary on policing and on society, and offering interpretations of the police in society’. In the ﬁnal part of this section, we will provide a potted history of the way the police have been represented in the media, and particularly in television drama. Leishman and Mason (2003) argue that since the formation of the ‘modern police’ in the nineteenth century, the police have always been concerned with presenting a positive image to the general public. In the early days of organized policing, there was by no means universal public support for there even being a centralized, government run police force. Histories of the origin and development of formal, modern policing in England and Wales illustrate the concerns about and opposition to the police. While there had been institutions of law enforcement going back to medieval times, with watchmen and constables performing community policing 133

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type functions from the thirteenth century, it was not until the late 1700s that more organized forms of local policing, such as foot patrols and horse patrols, developed in London. Emsley (1996), among others, suggests that it was concern about crime and disorder, highlighted by the growth of industrial capitalism and the consequent growth of urban industrial cities, that led to a fear amongst ‘respectable’ society of a new and potentially dangerous urban working class and a demand for better, more coordinated policing of the capital and elsewhere. These concerns and social changes led, then, to Robert Peel introducing legislation in 1822 for the creation of the Metropolitan police force in London. The model of the metropolitan police was soon copied elsewhere in the country and, following further legislation in 1857, the formation of local police forces was made obligatory for local government throughout the country. However, while there was support and even affection for the new English ‘bobby’ (named so after Robert Peel), there was also a good deal of opposition, and often hostile opposition, to the new police. Emsley refers to police ofﬁcers being regularly assaulted by the public and having to patrol with cutlasses in some of the ‘rougher’ working class areas, with certain areas virtually left to themselves and unpoliced. In view of these reactions and worries, it is not surprising that the police were concerned from the start with promoting and maintaining a positive image of themselves and their role in society. And to some extent the police did win the public over and became an accepted and acceptable part of British society; indeed Emsley cites a comment from The Times in 1904 talking of the police as ‘a great human mechanism, perhaps the greatest of its kind’. The development of a sort of admiration for, and certainly acceptance of, the new police was in part at least due to the portrayal of them in both ﬁction and newspaper reporting of the time. From these early days, the new police were represented in two main ways – as an approachable patrol ofﬁcer helping to prevent crime through his (early police ofﬁcers were invariably male) presence on the streets or as a skilled detective, working, almost Sherlock Holmes-like, to solve major crime. This combination, or division, of images has been continued through to the present day in media presentations of police and policing – a combination of a soft police service and hard law enforcement (Leishman and Mason 2003). The plots in the comedy series, Thin Blue Line, for instance, centre around the different approaches to law enforcement of the morally principled, but often bumbling, everyday policing epitomized by Inspector Fowler and the more devious, ‘results at any cost’ style of Detective Sergeant Grimshaw. Indeed, this dual approach in policing – of service against force, of soft against hard policing, has led to a tension that is still apparent in the police service today – the uniformed bobby on the beat against the more hidden work of the plain-clothed detective. In her discussion of the way the role of the police has been portrayed by the media, Jewkes (2004) considers two ‘mediated ideals’ of the police, representative of these two styles of policing. Here, we will consider these two ideals in a little more detail – on the one hand, illustrated by PC (later Sergeant) George Dixon in the Dixon of Dock Green series that ran from 1955 to 1976 on ITV, who exempliﬁed community policing at its best and, on the other, by Detective Inspector Regan and Detective Sergeant Carter, the no nonsense crime ﬁghters in The Sweeney (which ran for four series from 1975 to 1978 on BBC1), whose style of and approach 134

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to investigating and arresting major criminals often skirted on the margins of legality. Of course, there have been many more television and ﬁlm representations of police and policing which we will not be able to consider in this brief overview. Police detective ﬁlms, for instance, have been a popular staple of cinema ﬁlms for years – and many of these ﬁlms portray police ofﬁcers kicking out against authority and the constraints placed on them in doing their job (a theme central to The Sweeney television drama). Films such as A Touch of Evil and The Big Heat in the 1950s, through to the glut of police detective ﬁlms in the 1960s and 1970s, including Bullit, Klute and Chinatown, portrayed the leading police ofﬁcers as heroic crime ﬁghters. Probably the seminal ﬁlm of this ilk was Dirty Harry (1971), starring Clint Eastwood, which focused on the conﬂict between crime-solving and following the rules, and was followed by other vigilante cop ﬁlms such as Lethal Weapon and Die Hard in the 1980s and 1990s (Leishman and Mason 2003). Here, though, our focus will be on British television representations and in that context Dixon of Dock Green and The Sweeney provide sort of extreme, almost stereotypical, examples of the role of the police ofﬁcer and of different styles of policing. Jewkes and other commentators have highlighted and examined the key role that the Dixon of Dock Green series played in setting a benchmark for television portrayals of the police. The series and, particularly the character of Dixon, created a symbolic representation of the ‘British bobby’. In his discussion of media images of the police, Mawby (2003) argues that, in the early days of the series, Dixon was viewed as a realistic portrayal of policing but that towards the end of its run it was widely viewed as irrelevant and outdated – with tougher police series such as Z Cars (1962–1978), Softly, Softly (1966–1976) and, as mentioned, The Sweeney, seen as providing a more modern and accurate picture of policing. During the period when these early police television series were shown, there was a change in the construction of policing, reﬂecting changes in the police’s relationship with the wider public. The last three series mentioned above, and especially The Sweeney, were made at a time when there was more questioning of (and dissatisfaction with) the police. Mawby (2003) sees the central characters as ‘symbolic of their respective times’ – the late 1950s and less settled mid-1970s – with the optimism of Dixon and his pride in his job replaced by the cynicism of Regan. PC George Dixon originally appeared in a ﬁlm, The Blue Lamp (1950), and although only playing his part for the ﬁrst twenty minutes of the ﬁlm (until he was shot) the popularity of his character led to the drama series Dixon of Dock Green. As mentioned above, the series was seen as a realistic portrayal of day-to-day policing, a realism that was accentuated by it focusing on the everyday aspects of the job, rather than the spectacular or comic aspects that tended to be highlighted in ﬁlms. Leishman and Mason (2003) describe the Dixon character as the ‘embodiment of all that was good and dependable’ and this was reinforced by his ﬁnal monologue at the end of each episode where he ‘would use the night’s story as a reminder to his audience to stay on the straight and narrow’. This caring approach sits in stark contrast to the harsher image presented by later series such as The Sweeney. In comparing the two 135

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styles of police programme, Reiner (1994) sees Dixon and The Sweeney as thesis and antithesis respectively: The thesis, represented by Dixon, presents the police primarily as carers, lightning rods for the postwar consensual climate. Its antithesis, The Sweeney, portrays the police primarily as controllers, heralding the upsurge of a tough law and order politics in the late 1970s. Before considering The Sweeney as illustrative of a harder style of policing, there were other police drama programmes that presented a different view of policing to the Dixon model and we will refer to the Z Cars series, which overlapped with Dixon for a number of years. Leishman and Mason (2003) suggest that Reiner ignores the importance of Z Cars by interpreting it as essentially a transition between the two styles of policing represented in his comparison of Dixon and The Sweeney. Leishman and Mason argue that Z Cars was ‘a world away from the stately pace of Dixon’ – it attacked the conventions of the older series and portrayed a different world of policing, set in a ﬁctional estate, Newtown, based on the large new town of Kirkby on the outskirts of Liverpool, which was the ﬁrst area of the country where Unit Beat policing (with police in panda cars rather than on foot patrols) was practised. Indeed, the success of Z Cars was largely due to its perceived realism. The ﬁrst episode, in 1962, introduced the four PCs who were the patrol ofﬁcers featured in the series – they were not of the same high moral standards that George Dixon continued to exemplify. To use Leishman and Mason’s description of them: Lynch is depicted as a ‘lady’s man and uses the police telephone to check on the odds for his horses, while Steel argues with his wife, Jayne, who has a black eye received in retaliation for throwing a hotpot supper at him …’ Fancy Smith, an imposing Lancastrian, who explains to two young girls attempting to get into a nightclub, ‘Anyone who spoils my patch with trouble gets the back of my hand’ … dour Scotsman Jock Weir, introduced to the audience on a stretcher semiconscious after a rugby match. Assuring his superiors of Weir’s suitability for the job, (Sergeant) Watt tells them ‘He can handle himself in a bundle’ (2003, p. 57). Both Z Cars and Dixon of Dock Green attracted high viewing ﬁgures; however Z Cars attacked and undermined the ‘too good to be true’ world of George Dixon and its ‘warts and all’ portrayal of the police laid the ground for a range of other series, including Softly, Softly, Barlow at Large and Barlow. Leishman and Mason (2003) describe The Sweeney as ‘perhaps the ultimate celebration of the police breaking the rules in order to obtain a conviction’. It was the ﬁrst police drama to acknowledge police corruption, or at least rule-bending, as part and parcel of everyday policing. As mentioned earlier, it was clearly a product of its times and the late 1960s and early 1970s were a time when public conﬁdence in the police was being undermined in a number of ways and in particular through concerns over police corruption. Robert Mark, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police from 1972, established a department to investigate complaints against police 136

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ofﬁcers and during his ﬁve year term 500 ofﬁcers were dismissed or required to resign. Although scandals and corruption were not unique to this period, what was new was the revelation that they were systematic and widespread and went to the very top of the police force. Some of Scotland Yard’s most senior ofﬁcers were found guilty and given lengthy jail sentences in the 1970s, including ex-Commanders Ken Drury and Wallace Virgo, the two most senior ofﬁcers to come before British courts. The publicity surrounding these and other high-proﬁle cases affected the police’s relationship with the wider public. In a similar vein, the publicity surrounding the way the police handled demonstrations and industrial disputes excited concern and widespread criticism. In their handling of political demonstrations, over the Vietnam war and apartheid for instance, the police were criticized for being too heavyhanded and increased media coverage served to sharpen such criticism. Perhaps most dramatic were the television and news pictures of the policing of the miner’s strike of 1984/1985. The policing of this strike was very confrontational (indeed one ‘event’ is popularly referred to as the ‘battle of Orgreave’) and polarised the police from ‘ordinary’ working people. And the inner-city riots and disorders of the early 1980s in Brixton, Toxteth, Moss Side and elsewhere reﬂected an increased alienation between the police and sections of the population. All of these events were ﬁlmed and appeared in our living rooms almost as they occurred and they could be seen as signifying and encouraging a move away from traditional notions of policing, and the image of the local bobby, toward a more militaristic and reactive form of policing. And The Sweeney was inﬂuenced by and to some extent a product of these socio-political inﬂuences and their presentation in the media. After the success of a one-off television ﬁlm, 13 onehour programmes were made under the title of The Sweeney (cockney slang for ‘The Flying Squad’). Although not as heavily violent as ﬁlms of the time such as Dirty Harry or of more recent portrayals, The Sweeney presented crime ﬁghting as a battle – taking place in the ‘urban jungle of London’ (Leishman and Mason). The rule-bending by Regan, Carter and other members of the ‘squad’ was conﬁned to what was needed to catch villains, with the ofﬁcial procedures seen as red tape getting in the way of the police’s attempts to save and shield the public from crime and criminals. As with other commentaries on the importance of The Sweeney, Leishman and Mason cite Regan’s rant from an episode called Abduction: Try and protect the public and all they do is call you ‘fascist’. You nail a villain and some ponced up, pinstriped Hampstead barrister screws it up like an old fag packet on a point of procedure and then pops off for a game of squash and a glass of Madeira. He’s taking home thirty grand a year, and we can just about afford ten days in Eastbourne and a second-hand car. No, it’s all bloody wrong my son. (2003, p. 75) The Sweeney certainly broke the mould in terms of television portrayal of the British police. Before moving on to look at media representations of other areas of our criminal justice system, in ﬁnishing this section we will mention some more 137

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recent examples of police dramas. Any review of police drama on British television would be incomplete without mentioning The Bill, which in terms of longevity has become Britain’s most successful police programme. First broadcast in 1984 and now in its 23rd year, The Bill ﬁnally outstripped Dixon of Dock Green in August 2005. It has adapted to meet the challenges of the highly competitive world of television drama and is currently (Spring 2008) showing for two one hour episodes per week (plus past episodes on UK TV Gold). Each episode attracts over 4 million viewers and it is broadcast in over 50 countries worldwide. The Bill recounts the goings on in and around a ﬁctional Metropolitan police station, Sun Hill, located in the East End of London (based on the ‘real’ London Borough of Tower Hamlets). It is unusual in police dramas in that it adopts a series, soap opera format and does not focus on one aspect of police work only but rather on the lives and work of ofﬁcers on one shift of the uniform division and on the work of detectives based there. In terms of the division between ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ policing and the portrayal of these different police styles exempliﬁed by Dixon of Dock Green and The Sweeney respectively, The Bill established a kind of mid-way position and balance between the two poles, as well as accommodating both the uniformed and detective sides of policing (Leisham and Mason 2003). Indeed, Reiner (2007) argues that The Bill can be interpreted as the ‘synthesis of the dialectic’ that was represented by the police portrayals in Dixon and The Sweeney (see p. 133 above). It shows a range of contrasting images of police work, from community constables to rule-bending detectives. Reiner (1994) also comments that The Bill represented the ‘spectrum of contemporary policing in terms of gender, race, organisational specialism and rank’. This approach was developed and can be found in a number of other, more recent police programmes which we are not able to consider here (programmes such as Heartbeat, Morse, Juliet Bravo, The Gentle Touch and Prime Suspect). Taking on Reiner’s argument, Leishman and Mason (2003) suggest that as The Bill developed in the 1990s and into the 2000s it became a ‘new synthesis’ of police representations in the media. It began to highlight more disturbingly corrupt police characters, while the ‘ordinary’ police ofﬁcers began to be portrayed with serious moral failings and personal ﬂaws. As Leishman and Mason put it: Ever the synthesis, The Bill has come to deﬁne the virtually real territory of a contemporary TV copland, where the moral certainties of Dixon are long gone and television cop heroes have become people whose virtue is relative rather than absolute. (2003, p. 103)

QUESTION BREAK Consider current portrayals of police ofﬁcers in television programmes (both police drama and more general soap operas and dramas).

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What examples are there of police ofﬁcers portrayed as; a. ‘carers’ and ‘soft’ b. ‘controllers’ and ‘hard’? How are uniformed police ofﬁcers represented in comparison to detectives?

So far we have focused on ﬁctional representations of the police and in concluding we will refer brieﬂy to the police reality programmes of recent years – what might be termed ‘factional representation’. Again, given the conﬁnes of space in an introductory overview, we will focus on one major example of this genre – Crimewatch UK. Crimewatch UK began on BBC in 1984 and is broadcast on a monthly basis; it uses dramatic reconstructions and surveillance ﬁlm of crimes to try and gain information from the public that will help the police to solve particular crimes. It was developed from a popular German programme Aktenzeichen XY which had been running since 1967. Our discussion will be based on the more in-depth analysis of the programme offered by Jewkes (2004), in which she examines some of the myths about crime that she argues it helps to perpetuate. From its beginning until 2007 Crimewatch UK was presented by Nick Ross; however, and tragically, it became the subject of police and media attention in 1999 when Ross’s co-presenter, Jill Dando, was the subject of a violent murder. As well as continuity of presenters, the format of the programme has remained virtually the same since 1984. There are reconstructions of a few (usually three or four an episode) serious crimes, plus appeals to the public for information about offenders and suspects from a range of crimes across the country. There are updates on crimes and offenders covered in previous programmes – particularly where some progress has been made in catching offenders. Jewkes comments that this continuity and reference back to previous episodes and crimes serves the purpose of: congratulating the audience for helping to secure convictions, making them feel absolutely integral to the show, and further giving the (inaccurate) impression that Crimewatch is largely responsible for solving serious crime in the UK. (2004, p. 153) It is difﬁcult to measure the ‘success’ of the programme; in 2000 the Crimewatch team claimed that since 1984 there had been 582 arrests resulting directly from the programme. However, it is difﬁcult to substantiate such claims as many of those arrests may well have occurred without the programme anyway. Jewkes goes on to emphasize the inherent tension between information and entertainment which lies at the heart of Crimewatch and, indeed, ‘reality’ television programming in general. While speciﬁc items might not be included just for 139

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entertainment value, programme editors are aware that there has to be some visual and journalistic impact so as to make ‘good television’. This tension between entertainment and ‘its public service remit’, as Jewkes puts it, is illustrated by the sort of crimes which are represented on the show – basically the most uncommon (statistically) crimes such as murder and rape are those which are most often featured, while the more common but less spectacular property crimes and corporate crimes are rarely shown. However, it is clear that Crimewatch has been important in helping the police improve their public relations through demonstrating the police and public working together to investigate and solve real crimes: The beneﬁts to (the police) in terms of the warm feelings induced by watching the police and public working together to solve crimes arguably outweighs all other beneﬁts of the programme. (Jewkes 2004, p. 163) Each programme includes up to 30 ofﬁcers from across the UK making statements and appeals and taking part in interviewers with the presenters. This helps to lend a ‘personal touch’ to the investigations and presents the human face of the police service, hopefully acting as an encouragement to informants and witnesses to contact the police with information. While very popular and clearly having some positive impact on the polices’ relationship with the wider public and on solving particular crimes, Crimewatch has been criticized for contributing to the fear of crime through its emphasis on and dramatic reconstructions of violent and sexual crime. Leishman and Mason (2003) acknowledge that it is difﬁcult to establish whether the programme does engender an increased fear of crime, but refer to British Crime Survey information, which suggests that Crimewatch has helped to create a climate of fear of crime. Crimewatch has also been criticized for its reliance on police information and for the fact that the police largely determine the content of the programme; indeed without police cooperation it would not exist.

MEDIA PORTRAYAL OF THE COURTS/LEGAL SYSTEM

QUESTION BREAK Before considering how the media present court cases and the sentencing of offenders, it would be useful for you to consider how recent criminal trials have been reported.

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Look at the two headlines reporting the beginning of the trial of serial killer Dr Harold Shipman in October 1999. Find newspaper reports of a current or recent criminal trial from a ‘quality’ and a ‘popular’ paper. Doctor enjoyed killing, court told Jury hears that GP murdered 15 women patients because exercising power of life and death was ‘to his taste’ (The Guardian, 12 October 1999) The family GP who ‘killed 15 women just for kicks’ (The Daily Mirror, 12 October 1999) How would you describe the media presentation of the case in each ‘type’ of newspapers? How might their coverage inﬂuence readers views?

Although we have what is termed ‘open justice’ in the UK, with our courts open to the public, who are able to watch the proceedings in cases at both Magistrates and Crown Courts (apart from in special circumstances – for instance, where national security issues might be present – and in youth courts), television cameras or ﬁlming and photographing are not allowed in our courts. Indeed, the issue of whether to allow the televised recording of court proceedings has been widely debated for many years and raises the question as to what exactly does the phrase justice must be ‘seen to be done’ mean. In his overview of the issues around this debate on public viewing of British justice, Stepniak (2003) considers the rationale for why cameras were initially banned from English courtrooms and why this ban has remained in force. It was the Criminal Justice Act of 1925 which banned the taking and publishing of photographs in courts in England and Wales, in part due to the publication of a photograph in The Daily Mirror in 1912 of Judge Bucknill passing the death sentence on Frederick Seddon. This photograph, which was taken secretively without the court’s consent, caused a public outcry and was widely referred to in parliament in the years up to the 1925 Act. Although passed before television broadcasting had begun, the Act’s provisions have been extended to include television. More generally, the growing level of public interest in gruesome crimes and criminal trials helped persuade the authorities to ban cameras and keep them banned. However, that was over eighty years ago, before the massive technological developments which enable ﬁlming and photographing to be done in a much more discrete manner and before the enormous increase in news and information, including ﬁlms and pictures available through the internet as well as traditional media sources. There have been committees and working parties set up to revisit this issue and we will refer to some of the recent discussion on the issue. 141

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The Caplan Report in 1989, entitled Televising the Courts, was based on a study of overseas experiences of televising court cases undertaken by a working party of the Public Affairs Committee of the General Council of the Bar and led by Jonathon Caplan, a practising barrister. Their overall conclusion was in favour of televising court proceedings and they recommended a two-year trial period to allow such televising but under strict controls. These proposals led to a Private Members Bill being introduced in Parliament but, after vigorous debate, the Bill failed and the recommendations were not acted on. Stepniak points out that the Caplan Report’s conclusions were in line with all other studies and evaluations of this issue – none of which have indicated there would be a detrimental impact on what happens in our courtrooms as a result of televising. Stepniak then asks whether the continued courtroom ban is incompatible with the principle of open justice. Open justice should not just mean courts being open to the public but should refer to publicity in a wider context. Many, in fact most, people are unable to attend court proceedings in person and depend on the media for their information. As Stepniak puts it ‘as open justice clearly no longer depends on public attendance of proceedings, public scrutiny and informed debate relies almost entirely on the media’. And while courts no doubt recognize the role played by the media, they have been very reluctant to welcome in audio and visual media; rather they have conﬁned reporting to the press, in spite of the role played by television in contemporary society as the most relied upon source of public information. Although the 1925 law and the ban on televising in courts does not apply to Scotland, up until 1992 the courts had effectively barred cameras there too. However, after much perseverance the BBC persuaded the Lord President of Scotland to allow a trial ﬁlming at Edinburgh Sheriff Court. This resulted in a ﬁve-part documentary on BBC2 in 1994, called The Trial, that used footage from Scottish courts. The feedback from those involved was essentially positive – as the producer, Nick Catliff, said in 1999: ‘The reviews were very kind. It was good telly, it got a huge amount of press coverage and was watched by healthy audiences … The courts were pleased too … Our presence hadn’t caused chaos, there were no complaints that the administration of justice had been interrupted’. (cited in Stepniak, 2003, p. 265) Indeed, those in favour of ﬁlming and photographing in courts can refer to a range of research that suggests cameras have virtually no effect on proceedings (Stepniak (2003) refers to studies by Kassin (1984), Borgida et al. (1990) and Johnson (1993)). A more recent review by Mason (2001) looks at the ﬁlming of International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, which is an English-speaking court that has been using audio-visual equipment since 1996. There are six remote-controlled cameras in each of the three courtrooms, with the footage ﬁlmed live but broadcast after a 30 minute delay (in case participants mistakenly identify other protected parties). In research that involved interviewing judges, prosecutors, defence counsel and court staff, Mason found that the vast majority of respondents (92%) said they were only ‘occasionally’ or ‘rarely’ aware of the cameras in court. Very few (4%) felt that the judges were affected by the cameras, although a large majority (80%) felt that counsel would be much more likely to be affected, and may tend to ‘play acting’ and ‘dramatics’. As with other studies, this research offered strong support 142

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for cameras in court, on the grounds that they enabled justice to be seen to be done, that ﬁlming would enable the international community to have faith in the trials and that cameras might well enable relatives of those who died to see a trial that they would otherwise have been unable to. It was in the 1990s that viewers in England and Wales were also able to see televised trials from other countries, largely due to the spread of satellite television. However, two trials from the United States that gained massive publicity in Britain had a major effect in turning public and political opinion against the idea of routinely allowing cameras in British courts – the O.J. Simpson case and the Louise Woodward case. The media coverage of these and other high-proﬁle court cases in the United States, while being viewed by some commentators as showing justice being done, has also led to accusations of ‘justice being reduced to voyeuristic entertainment’ (Stepniak, 2003). Brief details of these cases are included in the question break insert below.

QUESTION BREAK Courts on TV? Although the courtroom drama has long been a regular and popular element of ﬁlms, TV dramas and soap operas, as we have seen in our discussion above, there has been a long-running debate as to whether television cameras should be allowed in British courts. Televised trials from the US have been shown on satellite TV in Britain and have had a major impact on this debate – examples of some of these cases are highlighted below. Nanny Murder Trial Teen-age British nanny, Louise Woodward, was accused of ﬁrst degree murder for allegedly shaking to death 8-month-old Mathew Eappen in Massachusetts. In a trial in 1997 that attracted international interest, the jury verdict (guilty of second degree murder) was followed by a surprise judge’s ruling whereby the charge was reduced to involuntary manslaughter and Woodward was given a custodial sentence that amounted to the time she had already spent in prison awaiting trial and was then sent home to England. LouiseWoodward was subject to massive and detailed media scrutiny throughout her trial, subsequent appeal and ﬁnal ruling. Every aspect of her expression and what she was wearing was commented on, her parents and friends were featured as they sat in courts and her anguished response to being found guilty at the ﬁrst hearing were broadcast live and to millions watching worldwide. O J Simpson Murder Trial American soccer star O J Simpson was tried for the 1994 murders of his ex-wife Nichole and her friend Ronald Goldman. Weekly reviews broadcast on the

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BBC were watched by an average of one million viewers and the live weekday coverage on Sky by an estimated 7 million viewers. Eventually Simpson was acquitted of the double murders. The televising of this high proﬁle and lengthy trial (from November 1994 to October 1995) raised the issue of cameras in court in the United States and elsewhere as well as highlighting issues around racism and prejudice in the criminal justice system. Early on in the trial, the Sunday newspaper The People reported that O. J. Simpson would be spared the death penalty even if found guilty of double murder (and even though in California murderers guilty of more than one murder are sent to the gas chamber). They quoted a Los Angeles lawyer as saying, ‘this guy is such a hero that no jury would convict if he faced the gas chamber’ (The People, 20 November 1994). And in reﬂecting on the coverage given this trial, The Mail on Sunday described the damage the case had done to the American criminal justice system – ‘We have watched an astonishing display of irrelevance for months on end, invented defence strategies, personal jury dramas, and a judge ﬁghting back tears. It has been long, preposterous entertainment … Part of the fault lies in the continuous television coverage, which has turned what used to be a solemn duty into a frivolous spectacle … The root of the problem is the American appetite for publicity’ (The Mail on Sunday, 1 October 1995). The Menendez Brothers Lyle and Erik Menendez, sons of a successful Cuban business man, were convicted in March 1996 of ﬁrst-degree murder of their parents, allegedly due to greed. They are both serving life sentences without the possibility of parole. The defence counsel argued that the boys had been subject to years of sexual abuse at the hands of their parents. These convictions were at the end of the second trial – the ﬁrst had run for six months up to January 1994 and ended with the juries (one for each brother/defendant) deadlocked. Ironically, at the second trial of the Menendez brothers, the judge ruled against live broadcasting due to what he termed ‘the carnival atmosphere’ that overtook the O. J. Simpson trial. List what you consider to be the main advantages of and potential difﬁculties and problems with the televising of criminal trials.

Moving on from the 1990s, the debate over live broadcasting from court has continued into the twenty-ﬁrst century. Although the issues are not exactly the same, for many years there was no televised broadcasting of the UK Parliament, partly due to a concern it would encourage politicians to play up to the cameras and would bring Parliament into disrepute. This ban was ended in November 1989 and television cameras in Parliament are seen as part of the landscape. However, any recording of proceedings in a court in England and Wales is still seen as contempt of court. And it is also contempt to produce a drawing inside the court – the artists’ 144

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pictures of trials that we do see are done from notes made in court but drawn from memory outside the courtroom itself. In August 2004, the Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, announced that there would be ‘wide-ranging consultation on the contentious issue’ (of cameras being used in courts) and that judges had agreed to a pilot scheme whereby appeal court cases would be ﬁlmed in the next few months. As he put it: ‘Technology and public attitudes have moved on since the legislation controlling the broadcasting of courts was passed in 1925’ (BBC News 24, 15 November 2004). Lord Falconer saw one of the key issues or problems as the danger that witnesses might be put off coming to court if they knew they were to be ﬁlmed; which is partly why the pilot was kept to appeal cases, where witnesses rarely appear in person. The broadcasters were delighted with this move, which at least opened up the possibility of partial televising of trials in the UK. However, there has been relatively slow progress since then; in November 2006, Lord Falconer is quoted as saying that he aimed to set out a ‘way forward before the end of the year’, but that he believed witnesses, defendants and jurors should not be shown (BBC News 24, 13 November 2006).

MEDIA PORTRAYAL OF PRISONS The notion and practice of using imprisonment as a penal sanction, a speciﬁc form of punishment, dates back perhaps two hundred or so years. Although prisons of one type or another had existed for many years before this time, such prisons were used mainly for holding people before trial, or indeed without trial. The sentencing of offenders to an actual period of imprisonment as a punishment was not typical; imposed punishments tended to be visible, quick and harsh, symbolized by the gallows and guillotine for instance. A key theorist in describing and explaining this change in the nature of punishment was Michel Foucault. Foucault’s work focused on issues to do with knowledge, power and the human body, and was not conﬁned to the area of crime and punishment. However, as regards our interest here, he examined the emergence of crime and the changes in the form of punishment in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This was the time of the industrial revolution and of hectic and dramatic social change that led to a widespread concern over the threat to social order that might result from a new, industrial working class. In his class text, Discipline and Punish, subtitled The Birth of the Prison (1977), Foucault examined and analysed the changes brought about by the emergence of modern industrial society and applied them to the area of crime and punishment. In this detailed study of the prison system that emerged in the early nineteenth century, he emphasized that the methods of dealing with criminals in the modern prisons was part of a wider process of control and regimentation in society. His work examines and explains the disappearance of punishment as a public spectacle of violence and the emergence of the prison – he saw the target of punishment as changing, it focused on the soul of the offender rather than just the body, on transforming the offender rather than just avenging the particular crime. Foucault saw these developments as illustrating how power operated in modern 145

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society, with open, physical force and the ceremonies around it replaced by a more detailed regulation of offenders – troublesome individuals were removed from society and, hopefully, re-socialized, rather than being broken and destroyed. So the ‘modern’ prison was established in the later eighteenth and, particularly, the early parts of the nineteenth century – and imprisonment became a normal form of punishment. Indeed, with the decline in public, physical punishments and the end of transportation to America (in the later eighteenth century) and, eventually, to Australia (in mid-nineteenth century) imprisonment soon became the main area for the disposal of offenders who had been found guilty of the more serious forms of criminal behaviour. The development of the prison was accompanied by debate and argument as to the best method of organizing and managing imprisonment as a form of punishment, and over the running of prisons in terms of organizational structure. This debate centred around the pros and cons of different systems of prison discipline – and in particular the separate system and the solitary system. In the separate system, prisoners spent all their times in single cells where they would eat, work and sleep – this, it was believed, would stop prisoners being contaminated by fellow prisoners and would allow them to contemplate their offending and emerge reformed characters. The silent system allowed prisoners to associate with and work with other prisoners but to be silent at all times. Both systems were inﬂuenced by the religiously motivated reformers of the time: Both systems were based on the idea that ﬁrst offenders or young offenders could be contaminated by more experienced criminals, and that prisoners should be silent, or separate from others, to allow reﬂection and repentance for their criminal behaviour. (Johnston 2006, p. 106) Contemporary writers and commentators examined and discussed these two systems; one such writer who was hugely inﬂuential at this time was Charles Dickens. Dickens was strongly critical of the separate system and, given his importance as an author and writer who was read widely in his day (and remains, of course, one of the great ﬁgures of English literature), we will look brieﬂy at his ideas here. Dickens argued that the separate system was ‘cruel and wrong’, and even if devised with the best of philanthropic intentions, those who were behind its introduction did not know what they were doing. Johnston (2006) points out that Dickens was particularly concerned about the psychological effects this system had on prisoners. She quotes from Dickens’ American Notes of 1842: Very few men were capable of estimating the immense amount of torture and agony which this dreadful punishment, prolonged for years, inﬂicts upon the sufferers … there is a depth of terrible endurance to it which none but its sufferers can fathom, and which no man has a right to inﬂict upon his fellow creature … I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body. (p. 107) 146

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As an aside, it is not surprising that the prison and prison life feature regularly in Dickens’ writing, given his family’s ﬁrst-hand experience of imprisonment. Dickens’ father was a naval clerk who got into ﬁnancial troubles and debt when Charles was a young lad, in the early 1820s. Eventually arrested for unpaid debt, Charles’s father, John, was sent to a debtor’s prison in South London and all the family belongings were sold to the pawnbroker. The whole Dickens family moved into the debtor’s prison for a while as it gave them a better standard of living than their previous difﬁcult circumstances. Charles moved out to separate accommodation but remained living close to his father in prison; after leaving prison, Dickens’ father and family lived together in Camden, London with Charles joining them. It was these ﬁrst-hand experiences of prison life which Dickens used in many of his famous works, including Pickwick, David Copperﬁeld and Little Dorrit. Of course, Dickens’ views were not the only literary or media representations of the separate system. As well as the concern for the mental health of prisoners articulated by Dickens, there was an alternative viewpoint which did not want this system to be seen as too soft. To return to more general issues concerning the emergence of the modern prison, the moving of punishment away from the public arena to behind the walls of the prison has given this form of punishment a secrecy that means the wider public are pretty poorly informed as to what prisons are like and how they function. It has meant that most people rely on the media for their information and understanding of prison and prison life. Mason (2003) points out that media representations of prison do not only affect the wider public but can and do inﬂuence those working in the criminal justice system. He refers to two Director Generals of the prison service acknowledging the role the media played in their own experience of prisons: In 1992, Derek Lewis confessed that prior to taking the post as head of the prison service, ‘his knowledge of prison life came from the media and the BBC comedy programme Porridge …’ (and) More recently, the current Director General, Martin Narey, said that the BBC documentary Strangeways ‘played a big role in my deciding to join the prison service’ (Mason 2003, pp. 279, 280). We have seen throughout this book that crime is a natural and major subject for the media to cover and that the most serious crimes receive the greatest coverage. This means that the media inevitably presents a distorted picture of crime and punishment (as the more serious crimes naturally receive the most severe punishments). So much of the media coverage of punishment focuses on prisons (the most severe punishment available within our criminal justice system). However, in spite of prison being the form of punishment that most usually springs to mind when punishment is considered, our knowledge of prisons is limited. As Levenson (2001) puts it ‘Despite this familiarity (with prisons), few people are aware of even the basic facts about imprisonment, such as the number of prisoners or the number of prisons, let alone the realities and routines of prison life. Rather, the familiarity is based on the symbolism of the prison and is fed by media images and portrayals of the prison in television 147

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and ﬁlm, from Porridge to Prisoner Cell Block H, Escape from Alcatraz to Shawshank Redemption’ (p. 14). There are obvious dangers with this reliance on media portrayals. Rather than emphasising punishment, prisons can be portrayed as easy-going and even privileged places. And the media coverage will almost inevitably highlight the more extreme aspects of prison life, such as riots or deaths in prison – the events they see as newsworthy. Indeed, these two contrasting aspects of the media representation of prisons – as easy going ‘holiday camps’, as the popular press regularly put it, or as dangerous and violent places – are highlighted by Coyle (2005). On the one hand, prisons are portrayed as dangerous, where there is an ever-present threat of violence and brutality (either from other prisoners or the prison staff ). On the other hand, the holiday camp portrayal suggests prisoners lie in bed all day if they choose to, eat well and have amenities and leisure activities that most people on the outside do not have access to (these two media pictures are explored in the question break box below). In reality, Coyle points out, daily life in prison is ‘far removed from either of these extremes’. In similar vein, Levenson makes the point that giving people accurate information about the criminal justice system is vital to secure public conﬁdence in it; as the public relies so heavily on the media any misrepresentation is very damaging. In contrast to these media representations and images of prison life, the most overwhelming feature of prison life would seem to be the routine and boring nature of it. Large institutions necessarily follow a fairly strict timetable and routine, and the features that are common in institutions of many kinds are liable to be more important in custodial institutions that have to be focused on security. The prison day is dominated by routine – cells are unlocked and locked at given times, meals are served at the same time and the activities of the day follow a tightly scheduled pattern. Not surprisingly, perhaps the major feature of day to day prison life is the monotony of it.

QUESTION BREAK Consider the extracts below, illustrating the contrasting extremes of the media picture of prison life – the holiday camp and the brutal and violent environment. They are taken from a number of different newspapers, national and local. ‘13 yrs inside … what a laugh’ A former armed robber has penned a crime book – about the FUNNY side of prison life. James Crosbie was a career criminal for over 40 years – spending more than half behind bars. He worked for the Krays and rubbed shoulders with Glasgow Godfather Arthur Thompson … But instead of detailing his hardman encounters, and police stand-offs, James’s tome Peterhead Porridge reveals the laughs he enjoyed during 13 years inside one of the country’s toughest nicks. James, now 70, said: ‘So many crime books paint a picture of how tough prison life is and how hard it is to survive … but the truth is they can be a laugh too’. (The Sun, 4 August 2007 )

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‘Now prisoners get to watch TV to save distress’ Prison bosses were criticized yesterday for spending thousands of pounds on an information service designed to stop inmates suffering ‘emotional distress’. Rapists, murderers and paedophiles waiting to be locked up at Pentonville jail will be comforted by a state-of-the-art TV providing information on prison life. The Ministry of Justice said it wanted to stop ‘boredom’ and ‘emotional distress’, as well as lessening the risk of self-harm. The decision to install the ﬂatscreen TV … was slammed as a waste of taxpayers’ money and an insult to crime victims. Blair Gibbs, spokesman for the Taxpayers’ Alliance, said: ‘If they can spend money on this, why can’t they build prisons’. A Spokeswoman for the Ministry of Justice said: ‘The last report by the Chief Inspector of Prisons criticized Pentonville for holding prisoners in the reception area for long periods of time with no distractions which led to boredom and emotional distress … This will paid for out of the prison’s annual budget.’ ( The Daily Express, 2 July 2007) ‘Huntley’s happy to die in jail: child killers cushy life’ Ian Huntley is happy. Britain’s law chief wants him to die behind bars – because he has got such a cushy life in jail. Huntley, 33, stunned jail staff with his reaction to the declaration by the Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer that he should never go free. The double child killer is so comfortable being a con he does not want to be let out. Huntley is monitored round the clock in Wakeﬁeld Prison’s healthcare wing – so he does not get vigilante attacks. He gets three meals a day in the West Yorkshire jail – plus extra dishes in cookery classes … He also gets regular letters from smitten sweetheart Maxine Carr, who was also jailed for giving him a false alibi for the 2002 murders of 10-year-old Soham schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman … and unlike other inmates he is allowed to see visitors in a private room. According to insiders the monster, who was ordered to serve at least 40 years, ‘struts round as if he owns the place’. ( The Daily Star, 26 March 2007) ‘Prison doesn’t work. It’s like a holiday camp’ Tommy Knight has been in prison 12 times, taking up a total of nine years of his life. Honest citizens and victims of crime in particular would hope this punishment would have worked … But, sadly, this is not the case. To put it in Tommy’s words: ‘Prison doesn’t work. It is actually not that far removed from a holiday camp. It is just like you are in another little world for a while’ … He describes the British criminal justice system as a ‘soft touch’ … ‘When you come in here you get exactly the same as what you get on the outside. You can have more of a laugh in here as everyone has something in common. I would say that some people actually have a better life in here compared to the life they have outside of prison.’ ( Liverpool Echo, 23 October 2003)

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‘Overcrowding blamed for rise in prison deaths’ Penal reformers last night claimed that increased overcrowding lay behind the rising number of deaths in prison, after the ﬁrst ofﬁcial count revealed the annual ﬁgure was nearly 600. ( The Guardian, 22 September 2007) ‘Prison wing “unﬁt for animals” closed down’ A damning report from environmental health inspectors has led to the closure of a prison wing after inmates threatened the Prison Service with a high court action. The last of 80 prisoners from Gurney wing at Norwich prison were moved to other jails this week as the 81,333 prison population in England and Wales was expected to reach record levels today … The wing was originally scheduled for closure in January after the Independent Monitoring Board declared it was ‘unﬁt for animals’, but it was reopened after three days because of overcrowding. The Prison Service only put inmates in cells certiﬁed as ﬁt for habitation, but prisoners complained they were living next door to uncertiﬁed cells which had broken soil stacks, mould on walls, nesting pigeons, rodent infestation and a terrible stench. Environmental health inspectors found that cells on Gurney wing were between 50 and 75 times more hazardous to inmates’ health than normal housing conditions. ( The Guardian, 5 October 2007)

QUESTIONS How would you describe the portrayal of prison life from the different newspapers? What reaction might these images produce from the wider public? What explanations can you offer for such different representations? How might politicians and policy makers use these images? As was suggested earlier, the images of prison from the media are a, if not the, major source of information on prison and prison life for the vast majority of the population. And much of this information comes from ﬁctional representations of prison in literature, ﬁlm and television. We will touch on some examples of this ﬁctional representation in concluding this section. Mason (2003), in an overview of cinematic representation of the prison, describes how prison has been a feature in ﬁlms from the early days of the cinema. He categorizes the main different approaches and themes of the 300 plus prison ﬁlms that have been made. Some highlight the sheer brutality of prison life (Midnight Express (1978), McVicar (1980) and Scum (1979), for example). Others focus on prisoners battling 150

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with the authorities and jailers (such as Cool Hand Luke (1967) and Papillon (1973)). In spite of the number and range of prison ﬁlms, Mason points out that there is a lack of literature on the media representation of imprisonment, and the prison ﬁlm is not a recognized genre, in that ‘prison ﬁlm’ is not used in the same way as ‘western’ or ‘gangster ﬁlm’. Also, and in a similar way in which a prison scene or example might be part of a piece of literature, as in the case of many of Dickens’ books, a major problem with the term prison ﬁlm is deciding what proportion of a ﬁlm should be made inside a prison to ‘earn’ that categorization. Scenes of imprisonment can be found in many different types of ﬁlm, and in a wide range of television programmes. In suggesting different themes of the prison ﬁlm, Mason (2003) argues that ‘cinematic representations of prison are not easily classiﬁed … due partly … to the variation in the number of prison ﬁlms that have been made across the decades’. He does, though, attempt to suggest some main themes. These include, the representation of the prison as a machine that grinds people down with its rules and regulations and the emphasis on the effect of imprisonment on the newly imprisoned offender – in particular, the dehumanizing process of becoming a prison statistic. Although perhaps not as much a feature of day-to-day television as the police, prison and prisoners are a common feature on a range of television programmes. In her review of this aspect of media coverage Jewkes (2006) provides a number of examples: the world of prison and prisoners has now permeated most television genres: sitcom (Porridge), ‘serious’ drama (Buried, Oz), light entertainment drama (Within these Walls, Bad Girls, The Governor, Prisoner), documentary (Strangeways, Life: Living with Murder, Jailbirds, Prison Weekly, Feltham Sings) and reality TV (The Experiment, Real Bad Girls), to name but a few. (p. 137) Here we will look at a television programme that is most generally cited as inﬂuencing people’s views on and knowledge of prison – Porridge. This was a BBC television sitcom broadcast between 1974 and 1977, written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais and starring Ronnie Barker and Richard Beckinsale. It was set in a ﬁctional prison ‘HMP Slade’ and led to various spin offs, including a ﬁlm and a follow-up series Going Straight. While dramas and comedies are not always seen as bona ﬁde sources of information, it is interesting that Porridge was popular with British prisoners, who recognized it had a high degree of authenticity. As ex-prisoner and, more recently, Guardian columnist Erwin James put it: What fans could never know, however, unless they had been subject to a stint of Her Majesty’s Pleasure, was that the conﬂict between Fletcher and Ofﬁcer Mackay was about the most authentic depiction ever of the true relationship that exists between prisoners and prison ofﬁcers in British jails up and down the country … When I was inside, Porridge was a staple of our TV diet. In one high-security prison a video orderly would be dispatched to tape the programme each week. If they missed it, they were in trouble. (James 2005) 151

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In her examination of popular media and prisons, Jewkes (2006) considers the impact and importance of Porridge. A key element of this programme was its depiction of human relationships and particularly that between the old-time, persistent criminal, Norman Fletcher, and the naïve, young ﬁrst time offender, Lennie Godber. The relationship between a street-wise, cunning mentor ﬁgure and an innocent, gullible friend is common to many British sit-coms (Jewkes cites Only Fools and Horses, Steptoe and Son and Blackadder, among others, as examples). This element is not necessarily dependent on the prison setting; however other aspects of the programme are. The series illustrates a period in British prison history when the ‘justice’ model was coming to the fore and the welfare/rehabilitation emphasis of the previous decade was being undermined. Jewkes sees this ‘dynamic … (as being) represented in the form of a ‘soft’ screw and a ‘hard’ screw; the benign and wellmeaning Mr Barrowclough, who always saw in his charges the potential for reform, and ofﬁcious disciplinarian, Mr MacKay, who ruled his wing with an iron will and military disposition’. From a more critical angle, Porridge can also be interpreted as working against prisoners’ interests and against penal reform by the rather cosy picture of prison life which might make the wider public less concerned about prison conditions and the reality of a prison system facing dangerous levels of overcrowding. From this perspective, Porridge, while giving the public some sense of what prison is like, could be seen as having ignored the humdrum, boring but often tense reality of prison life by showing it to be, basically, a ‘bit of a laugh’. It does not encourage the viewing public to think critically about prisons. Jewkes (2006) compares it with Bad Girls, in that it is essentially character-driven and only explores imprisonment at a relatively superﬁcial level. Summarizing Wilson and O’Sullivan’s study of the representation of prison in ﬁlm and television drama (2004), Jewkes comments: Their recurrent theme is that Porridge has failed because it presents a sanitized, comic version of conﬁnement, which allows the public to sidestep the reality of incarceration and absolves them from concerning themselves with the grim reality of conﬁnement at Her Majesty’s Pleasure. (p. 148)

QUESTION BREAK Do a brief content analysis of two newspapers. How many articles refer to prison and imprisonment. Consider a number of different television ‘soap operas’. How many of the characters have been in prison or have contacts with prisoners (members of their family, friends and so on). How would you describe the representation of prison and prison life in television dramas/soaps?

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FURTHER READING Leishman F. and Mason P. (2003) Policing and the Media: Facts, Fictions and Factions, Cullompton: Willan Publishing. An examination of the nature and effects of media images of crime and policing. It looks at how the police promote themselves in the media and considers both ﬁctional and documentary representations of police and policing. Mason P. (ed.) (2006) Captured by the Media: Prison Discourse in Popular Culture, Cullompton: Willan Publishing. This book explores media representations of and discourses on prison, again considering both ﬁctional and factual representations. It includes articles looking at press, television and cinematic portrayals of prison and prison life.

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CHAPTER 7 ❚ The media revolution – the proliferation of the internet ❚ The emergence of cybercrime

New Media Technology and Crime – Cybercrime

❚ Cyber obscenity – paedophilia and the internet ❚ Cyber violence – hate speech ❚ Cyber violence – terrorism ❚ Cyber violence – cyber stalking ❚ Cyber criminals ❚ Policing cybercrime

So far we have focused our attention on how the mass media represents crime, criminals and victims of crime. In this chapter, we look at recent developments in the media and the impact they have had on crime and the reporting of it. In particular, we will consider how new forms of electronic media have altered the relationship between the media, crime and justice. As regards this last comment, it is clear that the internet has become an integral part of social and business activity over the last two decades. The educational, ﬁnancial and social beneﬁts of the internet cannot be underestimated; however its proliferation has also raised concerns about the potential for criminal opportunities. Crime via the internet has become known as cybercrime. This type of crime is particularly nasty as the perpetrators for the most part remain ‘faceless’; the ‘virtual offender’ is able to enter the victim’s personal space, unintentionally invited into living rooms, bedrooms and so on. The victims of such crimes range from governments and businesses to individuals and many tend to be from particularly vulnerable groups – for example, children in the case of paedophilia. This crime has none of the conventional boundaries that we associate with criminal behaviour – victim and perpetrator can be in different cities, countries or continents. The crime is unbounded by ‘real-time’, crimes can occur at any time, the victim may well be asleep or away from their computer when the crime occurs. Cybercrime is also unique in the fact that it only exists because of the internet/world wide web; in other words this chapter 154

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would not be written if it were not for the recent development and spread of new forms of mass media of communication, and particularly the internet. Cybercrime is not a minor or minority area of criminal behaviour; its costs, as well as its extent, in human and economic terms is enormous and growing. Writing in The Guardian, David Batty highlighted the massive growth in internet child pornography offences in recent years, citing Home Ofﬁce ﬁgures he found that the number of people cautioned for possessing child abuse images rose from 13 in 1994 to 363 in 2004 (a rise of 2,692%), the vast majority of these cautions being for downloading child porn images from the web. The number convicted for these offences rose from 63 in 1994 to 1,162 in 2004 (The Guardian, 16 January 2006). In 2004, card fraud over the Internet cost the UK £117m (Association for Payment Clearing Services) and it seems to be a booming business – research from Garlick, a personal data management service, claimed that identity fraud alone could cost the UK £4 billion by 2011 (The Guardian, 23 February 2007). Also in 2004, 77% of medium to large businesses reported virus attacks costing £27.8 million, while 17% suffered ﬁnancial fraud costing £121 million (Hi-Tech crime – The Impact on UK Business, The Home Ofﬁce, 2005). This chapter will explore the extent and impact of cybercrime in today’s society. We will discuss the variety of forms of cybercrime that society is faced with. Most cybercrimes, for example, are old crimes but in new guises. The internet facilitates the commission of what might be termed ‘traditional’ criminal behaviour. The criminal or criminally minded are faced with the opportunity to commit illegal behaviours on a whole new level. The potential for the targeting of different individuals and groups is vast. Owing to the sheer expanse of the internet, the following crimes, to name a few of the most obvious, have ﬂourished – online fraud from banks and other accounts (given the name ‘phishing’), identity theft and a range of sexual crimes. With regard to that last group, there has been a proliferation of sexual crimes through the use of the internet by paedophiles and the exploitation of children through child pornography and the increased opportunities for online stalking. Furthermore, crimes often related to the traditional use of the term subculture have also ﬂourished, for example, the co-ordination of football hooligans, which at one time were organized through local gangs. And terrorism now poses a different threat through the fear of cyber terrorism (see pp. 168–172 below). As we have pointed out, all these activities existed, even if to a lesser extent, before criminologists and journalists referred to cybercrime. Finally, we will look brieﬂy at the difﬁculty of policing such crime and the problems of ﬁnding laws and regulations that achieve a balance between freedom and control. The chapter is divided into four sections – the media revolution; the emergence of cybercrime; cybercriminals, in particular the motivations for and reasons behind their criminality; and policing cybercrime.

THE MEDIA REVOLUTION – THE PROLIFERATION OF THE INTERNET The massive technological developments and changes of recent years have widened access to technology; the use of the internet has risen sharply over the last decade and does so year by year. We will not go into any great detailed statistical review 155

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here, but it is obvious from our daily lives, at home, in work and during our leisure, that computers and the internet play a major part in contemporary twentyﬁrst century life. In terms of computer use, the average person can now use the web to further their social activity. Free Web sites such as Myspace.com and more recently Facebook.com (sometimes referred to as interfacing networks) allow online communication and correspondence with other groups and or individuals through an interactive network of user photos, proﬁles and web logs. According to research conducted by Nielsen/NetRatings, during August 2007 Facebook had 6,506,000 unique users in the UK and MySpace had 6,379,000 (The Guardian, 25 September 2007). In terms of leisure, online shopping has also increased over the last few years, with one report estimating that it will account for 40% of all UK retail sales by the year 2020 (uSwitch The Guardian, 16 February 2007). The most popular products bought online are now holidays, music and ﬁlms. And the growth of online fraud mentioned in the introduction to this chapter has not stopped people spending more and more online; spending on plastic cards over the 2006 Christmas period reached a record £31 billion, with 669 million plastic card transactions in December 2006 and with spending on these cards accounting for 63% of all retail sales (The Guardian, 23 February 2007). And of course, much ﬁnancial business is also conducted online. Research into the phenomena that is Online banking, by TowerGroup, has revealed the extent of the growth. According to their research, online banking is outpacing all other methods of retail banking and by 2010 will make up 31% of all banking transactions.

QUESTION BREAK Think about your everyday lives – at work and home. How often and for what purpose do you use the World Wide Web? How and in what ways might your use of the internet leave you vulnerable to crime/criminals?

As an example of the impact of the internet, we will consider the global panic that arose over the ‘millennium bug’. During the 1990s, the approach of the new millennium saw a gradual rise in panic over what might happen on the actual turn of the millennium – concerns about potential incidents of apocalyptic mayhem were induced by millenarian doomsday cults, predicting the end of civilization as we know it. For example, in 1997 the mass suicide of the Heaven’s Gate cult in California was an event that illustrated both the panic over the new millennium and the power of the internet. The leader of the group, Marshall Applewhite, persuaded thirty eight group members to commit suicide so that their souls could be taken to a higher place of existence by riding on a spacecraft that was travelling behind the comet Hale-Bopp. 156

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The group believed that the comet Hale-Bopp was a sign that they were meant to leave Earth before it was destroyed, or ‘recycled’ as the cult put it. In terms of the role of the internet, the following comment was made by the CNN news network a year after the mass suicide: It was perhaps the strongest sign yet that the Internet was coming of age: it was implicated in a tragedy that shocked the nation. The 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate cult who took their own lives one year ago were professional Web page designers who used the Internet to attempt to win converts and spread their message. (CNN Interactive 25 March 1998, www.edition.cnn.com) However, the greatest panic that was excited by the approach of the new millennium came through the realization of just how much modern society relied on technology and the consequent fear of the effects of the impending ‘millennium bug’. With regard to the millennium bug, which was given the name of Y2K (for Year 2000), the argument was put forward that the date-related processing system would break down when the numbering assumption became invalid with the change from 99 to 00 on 1 January 2000. Therefore, computers would fail to recognize the year 2000. It was argued that, at the stroke of midnight, all computer networks would break down and critical industries and services would be severely and catastrophically affected. Governments put forward contingency plans – Britain spent over 100 million pounds on a project called Package 2000 and the US spent over 300 billion dollars. At a speech in March 1998 Tony Blair went as far as to argue ‘So the problem starts now, but will gather pace up until the year 2000. And it is serious because there are few, if any, areas of modern life that are not touched by IT. If we don’t tackle this problem, the economy will slow as many companies divert resources to cope with computer failures and some even go bust’. (www.number10.gov.uk/output/Page1161.asp) Tabloid newspapers on the run up to the year 2000 added to the moral panic around the millennium bug. The following two headlines from a British tabloid newspaper demonstrate the panic involved: ‘MILLENNIUM BUG TO HIT 999 CALLS’ POLICE forces and ﬁre brigades across Britain could be plunged into chaos because of the millennium bug, it was revealed last night. (Sunday Mirror, 17 May 1999) ‘ARMY CALLS IN RESERVES FOR MILLENIUM CHAOS’ OFFICERS from Britain’s Army reserves have been put on alert to deal with the chaos of New Year’s Eve 1999. They have been asked to help cope with possible civil unrest and communications disasters as the year 2000 begins. Whitehall fears the huge celebrations, plus widespread computer failures due to the ‘Millennium Bug’, will leave the country facing a ‘Doomsday’ scenario. (Sunday Mirror, 15 November 1998) 157

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The tabloid newspapers were not the only media source to detail and discuss the Millennium bug and its perceived consequences. The end of the 1990s saw hundreds of books published that marketed the ‘crisis’ in often disturbing and unique ways. The content of these books ranged from the practical preparation for the crisis (stockpiling of foods and the like) to religious and spiritual interpretations of the millennium bug meltdown to political conspiracy theories and to the simply weird and wacky. Below is an example of the kind of texts that where being written and the publicity blurb that appeared on the covers. ‘What Will Become of Us. Counting Down to Y2K’ (Julian Gregori Editor, 1998) The average American depends wholly on computers to provide food, water, fuel, light, money and health. What would it be like to ﬁnd ourselves without the things we take for granted? Imagine total vulnerability. This is the essence of the y2k crisis. (Electronic Commerce Expert in Washington, DC) ‘Millennium Bomb: The Y2K New World Order Conspiracy’ (Tim Schwartz, 1999) Is the predicted Y2K bug all a clever hoax or a real global disaster in the making? Who is behind this disturbing turn of events … and why?’ The Millennium bug also heightened awareness of the infallibility of computers and the risk of attack through cyber terrorism (something we will discuss later in the chapter, p. 168). Everyday lives and the internet Of course, the millennium passed without any major catastrophies occurring, but the concerns surrounding 1 January 2000 demonstrate societies’, and especially Western societies’, reliance on the computer and information technology for all aspects of life – from the delivery of food items and clean running water to the functioning of nuclear power plants and world economies. Indeed, we seem to have become dependent on the internet in a relatively short period of time.

THE EMERGENCE OF CYBERCRIME In recent years, the development of information communication technologies (ICTs) have allowed the growth of networks which connect world economies, political groups, academic and scientiﬁc communities, and diverse populations. The internet has become an integral part of social activity. One of the most prominent writers associated with research into information technology communications is Manuel Castells. Arguably his most eminent work is The Information Age, in which he analyses contemporary capitalism (this work is divided into three volumes with the ﬁrst, titled 158

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The Rise of the Network Society: The Information Age, published in 1996). As indicated by the title of this study, Castells’ theory is based on the premise that at present society is in transition from the industrial age to the information age through our use of information technologies. This transition Castells called the ‘morphology of society’. According to Castells capitalism remains but its driving force has changed from energy to information. These processes have created, according to Castells, the ‘Network Society’. A wide range of networks, then, pervade and transform all domains of contemporary life. Accordingly, the form of power has also changed and, ‘is no longer concentrated in institutions (the state), organizations (capitalist ﬁrms), or symbolic controllers (corporate media, churches). It is diffused in global networks of wealth, power, information and images, which circulate and transmute in a system of variable geometry and dematerialized geography. Yet it does not disappear’ (Castells 1997, vol. II, 359). In terms of cybercrime, Castells focused primarily on the role of technology and organized criminal groups. In volumes two and three of The Information Age he identiﬁed what he termed the ‘Global Criminal Economy’ as a feature of the new network society. In other words, the internet has allowed criminal groups to communicate and interact on a global scale. The use of the internet by diverse populations has meant that the scope for potential victims is almost limitless. Castells argues that these criminal organizations are new phenomenon that have been empowered through networks to advance their goals, which in turn affects national and international economies, security and politics. Deﬁning cybercrime Deﬁning cybercrime is not easy and there continues to be debate over what it is that actually constitutes cybercrime. For example, international jurisdictions render some cybercrime legal in one country but illegal in another. As of yet there does not exist any internationally agreed-upon deﬁnition of cybercrime. The European Union, for example, has created a forum on cybercrime and many countries have signed The Council of Europe’s Convention on Cybercrime Treaty 2001 in order to aid in the standardization of European Law. In 2007, the United States passed two Bills regarding Cybercrime – the Cybercrime Act and later that year the Identity Theft Enforcement and Restitution Act, the latter of which has toughened cyber security standards. In spite of the difﬁculties, and the complex nature of cybercrime, theorists within the area have been, and still are, striving to achieve a workable deﬁnition. According to David Wall (2005), the following statements suggest three different ways in which the internet impacts on criminal opportunity. 1. The internet has become an advanced vehicle for communications that sustains existing patterns of harmful activity through the circulation of information. By this Wall is referring to the ways in which individuals, groups and websites circulate harmful information. Examples of these kind of activities would be chipping 159

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(the bypassing security devices within mobile phones, games consoles and the like) or the trading of sexual materials. 2. The internet has created a transnational environment that provides entirely new opportunities for harmful activities currently the subject of existing criminal or civil law. Under this deﬁnition harmful activities would include, for example, viruses, large scale fraud, online sex trade, child abuse (organized paedophilia) and organized football hooliganism. 3. The Internet has engendered entirely new forms of (unbounded) harmful activity. Here might be included unauthorized appropriation of images, software and music products through downloading, virtual rape, targeted hate speech or cyber sex. Wall has been one of the foremost criminologists who have investigated cybercrime and in trying to grapple with the deﬁnitional difﬁculties suggested above he has developed a fourfold categorization of computer-related crime (1999). These four categories refer to types of behaviour that encompass a range of activities and are worth spelling out and considering: Cyber violence

This does not refer to physical violence but instead describes the impact of certain cybercrimes on the individual or group. For example, cyberstalking, which refers to the continued harassment of a victim via the internet and through e mails – this can and does include paedophilia. Additionally, hate speech which can effect ethnic or social groups – this can be done via the spread of racist/homophobic images and/or doctrines via web sites such as those belonging to the British National Party or the Ku Klux Klan. Cyber violence also covers terrorism and the use of the internet to facilitate terrorist activities. Cyber obscenity

Refers to the production and trading of sexually explicit material. This type of cyber crime is difﬁcult to police as there are different political and moral beliefs regarding pornographic material. And these differences are particularly apparent across countries and cultures – so in the UK we accept images which would be seen as obscene in other parts of the world, such as Middle Eastern countries. In our discussion below we look at paedophilia and child abuse under the heading of cyber obscenity, although such behaviour clearly overlaps with the category of cyber violence as well. Cyber trespass

Can be described as gaining unauthorized access to computer systems for the purpose of either corrupting or stealing data. It includes the invasion of private spaces on the internet by hackers. 160

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Cyber theft

This includes traditional types of theft that are carried out through computers; for example, credit card fraud and theft from online bank accounts. It also includes the downloading of material that does not necessarily deprive the owner (music downloads for instance), and, more generally, what Wall refers to as ‘cyberpiracy’, the appropriation of intellectual properties. Although we will not be able to explore all of these different categories of cybercrime in great detail, we will refer to and consider examples of cyber obscenity and cyber violence to illustrate the extent and spread of cybercrime.

CYBER OBSCENITY – PAEDOPHILIA AND THE INTERNET Paedophilia is an area of crime that has gained much media attention over the past two decades. Indeed, concern over this type of crime has at times reached fever pitch. As we saw in our discussion of moral panics (Chapter 3), the use of the internet to engage in paedophilia has been an important aspect of the panic that has surrounded this area in recent years. It is difﬁcult to measure the extent of paedophilia on the internet for obvious reasons, such as the secrecy and anonymity that such behaviour encourages. This difﬁculty is exacerbated by the lack of clarity in deﬁning this behaviour. This lack of clarity is reﬂected in the Home Ofﬁce description of internet paedophilia as: A course of conduct enacted by a suspected paedophile, which would give a reasonable person cause for concern that any meeting with a child arising from the conduct would be for unlawful purposes (Home Ofﬁce 2002) The internet has created an environment where children and teenagers can be educated and be socially interactive with each other. However, these ‘spaces’ for children can also be accessed by adults who wish to harm children, either as a way of making money or by way of sexual exploitation (and often both together). Internet paedophilia leaves children particularly vulnerable to such exploitation due to the invisibility and secrecy of paedophile networks. Essentially, internet paedophilia can be displayed on two levels. First, information sharing – through the internet paedophiles are able, very easily to share and swap child pornography, disclose/access information about individual children, or work in tandem with one another to bring about paedophilic activities. Second, it might actually involve taking part in paedophilic activities – through, for example, viewing illicit material involving children, grooming children, especially through chatrooms, or the involvement may be for forms of passive sexual gratiﬁcation. There is also a growing concern that the proliferation of and easy access to the internet will mean that ordinary and generally law-abiding citizens could be lured 161

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towards child pornography. The following extracts from The Daily Telegraph illustrate this concern: Access to paedophilia was very limited in the past … restricted to a small group of people operating in the darkness. Now the Internet is pumping this stuff straight into your home, anyone can see it. The danger is that the internet is going to convert people to things that have traditionally been suppressed. (Daily Telegraph, 18 February 2002) Ministers believe the anonymity afforded by computers to users is tempting ordinary people, who would never buy illegal magazines, to look at child pornography out of curiosity. This then leads to them becoming hooked on more extreme material and to come into contact with paedophile rings. (Daily Telegraph, 18 June 2000) At present there is little signiﬁcant research into the proﬁling of internet paedophile offenders. However, there is some research regarding those who download and view child pornography. In the US, Wolak and colleagues (2005) conducted an intensive online victimization study entitled Child Pornography Possessors Arrested in Internet-Related Crimes. They examined 1,713 arrested people who possessed child pornography; the key ﬁndings from the data they gathered suggested that those arrested for child pornography generally ﬁtted into the following categories: 1. those sexually interested in prepubescent children (paedophiles) or young adolescents (hebephiles), who use child pornography images for sexual fantasy and gratiﬁcation. 2. sexually ‘indiscriminate’ users, meaning they are constantly looking for new and different sexual stimuli. 3. sexually curious users, downloading a few images to satisfy that curiosity. 4. those interested in proﬁting ﬁnancially by selling images or setting up web sites requiring payment for access. As regards the demographic characteristics of those arrested, Wolak and colleagues found that virtually all of those arrested were male, white (91%) and over the age of 25 (86%); the majority where unmarried yet had access to minor children, for example 42% had biological children and 46% had access to children through jobs and/or through organized youth activities which they were involved in. However, it must be remembered that this research was based on those who were eventually arrested and therefore is not totally reliable or valid as it cannot give an accurate picture of all of those people who view child pornography. Indeed, we can only guess at the extent of such viewing, but it is highly likely to be undertaken covertly by the vast majority of those who do download child pornography images. 162

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QUESTION BREAK Read the following report from the trial and conviction of an internet paedophile and consider the questions that follow. Jail for paedophile who terrorized via internet A paedophile who admitted terrorizing teenage girls into sending him explicit photographs of themselves via the internet was jailed for 10 years yesterday. Adrian Ringland, 36, used his hi-tech knowledge to remotely seize control of his victims’ computers in order to force them to strip and strike humiliating poses. The jobless father of two even boasted to one 14-year-old who threatened suicide unless he left her alone: ‘Call the cops … they won’t trace me’. Ringland, from Derbyshire, adopted the alias of Ant Jones, an ‘attractive’ 14-year-old boy, to use internet chatrooms, where he lured young girls into correspondence before brainwashing them with technological trickery. Victims believed they were opening a photo of their new online friend, but when they clicked on the bogus picture the attached ﬁle contained a Trojan virus which infected their computers, allowing the sexual predator to establish remote control. Ringland took over the computers, terrifying the girls into complying with depraved demands. Lisa Wilding, prosecuting at Inner London crown court, said: ‘This is about manipulation, exploitation and ultimately sexual gratiﬁcation, and reveals the horrors that lurk within the internet and the minds of some individuals that use it’. Ringland’s computer expertise allowed him to move cursors around the girls’ screens; text would appear, their printers would go into action, and their CD-ROM trays would ﬂy open and snap shut. He even forwarded naked photographs of them to their email buddies – all from the safe anonymity of a special study room in his own home. One girl said it was like a scene from the ﬁlm The Matrix when Ringland blanked out her screen. But he was caught when a 14-year-old girl from Manitoba complained to her parents. They told the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, sparking an international manhunt. The teenager emailed: ‘Dude, you’re scaring me … please don’t do this. I’m freaked’ when Ringland demanded a nude photo of her, but eventually sent him intimate poses, despite protesting that this was ‘internet rape’. The investigation, which involved Canadian, US and British police, led to Ringland’s address at Ilkeston, Derbyshire, where he lived with his partner, their two children, and her 14-year-old son. Even then, he tried to blame

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his partner’s son. But detectives who interviewed the boy quickly realized he did not have the expertise to carry out the crimes. After Ringland’s ﬁrst court appearance he was released on bail and banned from having computers in his home while his case was prepared. But when police called to check on him they found a 14-year-old girl in his bed. He had groomed her from an internet chatroom and had been having regular sex with her while on bail. Ringland pleaded guilty to 20 charges relating to internet abuse, two of indecency with a child, four of hacking, four of blackmail, and 10 of making indecent photographs of a child. They involved three girls in the UK and in Canada. Thirteen similar charges concerning several girls on both sides of the Atlantic were ordered to remain on ﬁle. Ringland also admitted six charges of unlawful intercourse with a child and one of internet grooming. (Cowan R., The Guardian, 10 November 2006)

QUESTIONS To what extent does Adrian Ringland ﬁt the characteristics of the ‘typical internet paedophile’ suggested by Wolak and colleagues’ research? Suggest the characteristics that distinguish internet paedophiles such as Ringland from ‘conventional criminals’.

In the next section, we look at cyber violence; however this division between cyber obscenity and cyber violence is to some extent artiﬁcial as certain types of criminal behaviour, such as child abuse, straddle both aspects of cybercrime. Child abuse is, of course, a crime that has existed throughout history, with the new forms of media perhaps merely offering different and wider opportunities for people to engage in such behaviour. The extract from The Observer newspaper in the question break below considers how child abusers and paedophiles exploit the internet to pursue their criminal behaviour. It also raises some of the difﬁculties involved in policing cybercrime (an issue we look at later in the chapter, pp. 177–179).

QUESTION BREAK Child abuse shown live on internet Children are being sexually abused to order by paedophiles who charge other members of their virtual sex-rings a fee to watch over the internet as it takes place.

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Abusers promise other members of their secret online societies that they will use a live webcam to ﬁlm a particular child on a speciﬁed day, provided enough money has been deposited in their bank account beforehand. Police have known for some time that real-time sexual abuse of children takes place over the internet and that images of abuse are bartered between paedophiles who are keen to increase their collections. But this is the ﬁrst time that real-time images of internet abuse have been sold for cash, raising concerns that criminal entrepreneurs have moved into the world of online child abuse. In a further twist, paedophiles watching the abuse take place are increasingly being allowed by the abuser to direct what is done to the child. There are even cases of the abuser and the paedophile voyeur working together to groom the child before the abuse begins. ‘This is an online version of what has been happening for years’, said Tink Palmer, a specialist in child abuse on the internet for Barnardos, who has identiﬁed the new tactic by paedophiles. ‘Children have long been sold by paedophiles to other abusers in their ring. This is the obvious next step’. ‘In these paedophile societies, having access to a child makes you enormously important and it seems abusers have realised they can use that status to proﬁt ﬁnancially’, she said. Palmer has come across situations where paedophiles direct the abuse over the web cam as it takes place. ‘The ﬁnal step is that the paedophile forms a relationship with the child through the camcorder, so they can encourage them to do certain things’, she said. It’s the perfect scenario for paedophiles: not only can they orchestrate situations that make it look like the child is proactively taking part but, because the child is left believing they were responsible for the situation, they will never tell anyone what took place. Peter Robbins, chief executive of the Internet Watch Foundation, has established arrangements with Visa and Mastercard to help to track paedophiles using their credit cards to purchase images over the net. ‘It was inevitable that this form of pay-per-view abuse would develop given the possibilities of the internet’, he said. ‘We already have live, pay-per-view, adult pornography webcams where you can pay a woman to carry out speciﬁc requests; this is the paedophiles’ version’. So far, police have failed to break the encryption codes created by online paedophile societies to block access into the group in time to prevent the abuse

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taking place and before the closure of bank accounts that could lead them to the abusers. Jackie Bennett, from the National Crime Squad’s Paedophile Online Investigation Team, admitted that the police were ﬁnding it difﬁcult to keep up with the new ways paedophiles were ﬁnding to exploit the internet. A spokeswoman for Greater Manchester Police also conﬁrmed that they were familiar with such cases, but added: ‘We can’t talk about this without compromising cases we’re working with’. (From: Hill A, The Observer, 9 November 2003)

QUESTIONS To what extent do you think that internet paedophilia is more dangerous than ofﬂine paedophilia? What psychological and sociological explanations can you suggest for the child abuse described above?

CYBER VIOLENCE – HATE SPEECH As we have seen, the internet is rapidly transforming the way that messages and ideas are disseminated. With regard to hate speech, it can be argued that the web is now a new frontier for the spread of extremist ideas and views which can and do prey on particular minority groups. Hate Web sites contain bias or prejudice based on a range of areas and characteristics, including race, religion, ethnicity, gender, disability and sexual orientation. The internet is a vehicle that enables extremist groups and their views to ﬂourish. Whereas ‘bigots’ and hate mongers once had to spread their views via leaﬂets and clandestine networks and meetings, they are now able to promote their views via web sites and chat rooms which potentially reach millions of people, including and especially impressionable youth. Furthermore they are also able to promote and recruit for their cause cheaply, effectively, anonymously twenty-four hours a day, reaching people in an instant. In this context and with regard to hate speech and the encouraging of violence against vulnerable minority groups, the rise of the Far Right is of particular concern. The use of the internet by Far Right groups has led many of them to develop and promote their own cyber cultures. Far right groups such as the BNP (British National Party), Combat 18, National Alliance, KKK (Ku Klux Klan) and Stormfront are

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continually involved in creating and making use of web site technologies such as internal hyperlinks, email links, Realplayer audio and video extracts. In an examination of cyber culture, Back (2002) asks why is it that society is seeing a proliferation of far right groups on the internet and what draws people to them. He looks at the relationship between cyber culture and the spread of racism in contemporary society. In pointing to the problems with deﬁning and classifying ultra right wing groups he makes the following point: For the sake of conceptual clarity I shall be deploying the notion of ‘cyber racism’ to speak about a range of subcultural movements in Europe, North America and beyond. While these movements are diverse they exhibit the following common features: • • • •

a rhetoric of racial and/or national uniqueness and common destiny ideas of racial supremacy, superiority and separation a repertoire of conceptions of racial Otherness a utopian revolutionary world-view that aims to overthrow the existing Order (2002, p. 632)

Back then suggests ﬁve ways in which the net assists racist activities: 1. It enables the celebration of real instances of racial violence with photographs and dehumanizing comments 2. It enhances racial narcissism, promoting indifference towards victims by using images and cartoon caricatures. 3. It enables the merchandizing of white power music and Nazi paraphernalia – building an economic power base 4. It enables the archiving and downloading of collections of racist materials in one place – such as racist speeches and debates. 5. It enables people to experience and yet remain geographically distant from racist culture. In relation to recruitment to their causes, it is very difﬁcult to tell what impact these Far Right wing web sites have. Back argues that ‘the number of white racists regularly involved in the Internet globally is somewhere in the region or 5000 to 10000, divided into 10–20 clusters. Once again, it is impossible to offer anything other than an educated guess. The number of “hits” on a web page, for example, need not indicate “sympathetic inquiries, rather they could include opponents, monitoring agencies and researchers. The key point is that the relatively small numbers of people can have a signiﬁcant presence”’ (2002, p. 639). Indeed, in writing this book the authors have ‘hit’ on such websites!

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QUESTION BREAK View the examples of the web pages of Far Right Organisations such as: British National Party Combat 18 National Alliance Stormfront Ku Klux Klan Choose a Far Right web page from the list above. Find and consider evidence of how the internet has assisted it in pursuing racist activities. Use Back’s (2002) ﬁve criteria to examine your chosen web site. How do they apply to the site you are considering? How do you think that hate speech encourages hate crime?

CYBER VIOLENCE – TERRORISM Another area where cyber violence can be seen is with regard to terrorism and the use of the internet to aid terrorists in their particular campaigns. One part of this which has been of particular concern has been the use of the internet by terrorist groups to recruit followers; especially followers prepared to ﬁght and, if necessary, die for the cause. The al Qaeda terrorist network has made use of the internet in this context. For instance, Syed Talha Ahsan was arrested in 2004 for operating web sites across the world (including the US, the UK, Ireland and Malaysia) which incited murder and urged Muslims to ﬁght the holy war (Jihad), as well as encouraging people to donate money. There has also been a concern that, to quote Coll and Glasser (2005): Al Qaeda and its offshoots are building a massive and dynamic online library of training materials – some supported by experts who answer questions on message boards or in chat rooms – covering such varied subjects as how to mix ricin poison, how to make a bomb from commercial chemicals, how to pose as a ﬁsherman and sneak through Syria into Iraq, how to shoot at a US soldier, and how to navigate by the stars while running through a night-shrouded desert. These materials are cascading across the Web in Arabic, Urdu, Pashto and other ﬁrst languages of jihadist volunteers. (Washington Post, 7 August 2005) Coll and Glasser (2005), writing in the Washington Post, make the point that as al Qaeda has gradually lost its sanctuary in Afghanistan, the movement has scattered 168

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into hiding and exile and has relied increasingly on the internet.They suggest al Qaeda has become: the ﬁrst guerrilla movement in history to migrate from physical space to cyberspace. With laptops and DVDs, in secret hideouts and at neighbourhood internet cafes, young code-writing jihadists have sought to replicate the training, communication, planning and preaching facilities they lost in Afghanistan with countless new locations on the internet. (7 August 2005) In his examination of Jihadi and Far Right websites, Whine (2006) highlights the extent to which the internet has been used by Far Right and terrorist groups as a means to communicate and publish material in a way which seems to have credibility and authority but which, if published in a hard copy form, would be deemed illegal. And the internet can be used to communicate around the world at a very low cost. Whine (2006) goes on to consider how the al Qaeda group has become a much more ‘de-centralized and diffused network of the Global Jihad Movement (GJM), in which the internet plays a crucial and developmental role’. The internet serves as a sort of meeting place for terrorists to discuss and exchange plans and ideas. He refers to Weimann’s study Terror on the Internet, which quotes from a web site linked to Al Qaeda which emphasized the ease of using the internet for such activities: We strongly urge Muslim internet professionals to spread and disseminate news and information about the Jihad through e-mail lists, discussion groups and their own websites. (www.azzam.com) In an online article accompanying his book Terror on the Internet, Weimann (2006) identiﬁes eight different ways in which terrorists use the internet. In the adapted extract from Weimann below, this list is summarized in some detail as it provides a very useful, and worrying, illustration of just how widely cyber violence can be and is aided by new forms of media and the Internet in particular. How Modern Terrorism use the Internet Psychological Warfare – There are several ways for terrorists to do this. For instance, they can use the Internet to spread disinformation, to deliver threats intended to distill fear and helplessness and to disseminate horriﬁc images of recent actions, such as the brutal murder of the American journalist Daniel Pearl by his captors, a videotape of which was replayed on several terrorist websites … 169

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Publicity and Propaganda – Until the advent of the Internet, terrorists’ hopes of winning publicity for their causes and activities depended on attracting the attention of television, radio or print media. These traditional media have ‘selection thresholds’ (editorial selection) that terrorist often cannot reach. No such thresholds, of course, exist on the terrorists’ own websites … Data Mining – The World Wide Web alone offers about a billion pages of information, much of it free – and much of it of interest to terrorist organizations … Fundraising – Like many other political organisations, terrorist groups use the Internet to raise funds. Al Qaeda, for instance, have always depended heavily on donations, and its global fund-raising network is built upon a foundation of charities, nongovernmental organizations and other ﬁnancial institutions that use websites and Internet-based chatrooms and forums … Recruitment and Mobilization – The Internet can be used to recruit and mobilize supporters to play a more active role in support of terrorist activities or causes. Most terrorist websites stop short of enlisting recruits for violent action but they do encourage supporters to show their commitment to the cause in other tangible ways … Networking – Through the use of the Internet loosely connected groups are able to maintain contact with one another – and with members of other terrorist groups. The Internet connects not only members of the same terrorist organization but also members of different groups. For instance, dozens of sites exist that express support for terrorism conducted in the name of jihad. These sites and related forums permit terrorists in places such as Chechnya, Palestine, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Turkey, Iraq, Malaysia, the Philippines and Lebanon to exchange not only ideas and suggestions but also practical information about how to build bombs, establish terror cells and carry out attacks … Sharing Information – The World Wide Web is home to dozens of sites that provide information on how to build chemical and explosive weapons. This kind of information is sought not only by sophisticated terrorist organizations but also by disaffected individuals prepared to use terrorist tactics … Planning and Coordination – Terrorists use the Internet not only to learn how to build bombs but also to plan and coordinate attacks. Al Qaeda operatives relied heavily on the Internet in planning and coordinating the September 11 attacks … (Adapted from Weimann 2006) There have been other, similar attempts to categorize and typologize the different ways in which terrorists can make use of the internet to further their interests. Conway (2006) highlights what she terms are the core uses of the internet by terrorists. First, ﬁnancing, referring to the raising of funds and how ‘the immediacy and interactive nature of Internet communication, combined with its high-reach properties, opens up a huge potential for increased ﬁnancial donations’. Second, networking, allowing terrorist groups to act in a more decentralized manner and ‘to communicate quickly and coordinate effectively at low cost’. Third, the recruitment and mobilization of sympathizers to ‘more actively support terrorist causes or activities’. Fourth, and 170

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ﬁnally, information gathering, referring to the Internet’s capacity to access huge amounts of information which would previously have been very difﬁcult to retrieve and use. Conway concludes her discussion of the internet and terrorism by commenting that research ﬁndings are still inconclusive as to whether the spread of the internet has led to an increase in terrorist violence. However, it is clear that online communications have improved the ability of terrorist groups to raise funds, attract recruits and reach a mass audience. As Conway puts it: Obviously, the Internet is not the only tool that a terrorist group needs to ‘succeed’. However, the Net can add new dimensions to existing assets that groups can utilize to achieve their goals as well as providing new and innovative avenues for expression, fund raising and recruitment. (2006, p. 14) We will conclude this brief review of terrorism and the internet by referring to a particular case study (in the question break section below). This recent example is of a young male recruit who became involved with al Qaeda and became the ‘world’s most wanted cyber-jihadist’.

QUESTION BREAK Al-Qaeda’s 007 Younes Tsouli arrived in London in 2001 … He studies IT at a small college in central London. With few friends, he soon immersed himself in the world of the internet. Online images of the war in Iraq radicalized him. In his mind it was evidence of a war against Muslims. Soon he was in the darker areas of the net, and graduated from viewing images to publishing them. He used variations of the username Irhabi 007 – irhabi meaning terrorist in Arabic, and 007 being reference to Britain’s most famous ﬁctional spy … By 2004 he was posting extremist videos and propaganda. That was when he came to the attention of al Qaeda leaders in Iraq, who spotted his potential. They were making videos but struggling to get them to a wider audience because of the size of the ﬁle and the difﬁculties of ﬁnding websites that could host them. Tsouli solved this problem, making him invaluable … He converted the material into various formats, including one that allowed the videos to be watched on mobile phones … In August 2005 Tsouli became administrator of al Ansar, a passwordprotected web forum where extremists communicated with each other … Among the discussion were details of how to get to Iraq to be a suicide

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bomber … When London was bombed in July 2005, Tsouli wrote: ‘Brother, I am very happy. From the moment the inﬁdels cry, I laugh’. He grew enamoured of his reputation … In a message dated June 5, 2005, he wrote: ‘I am still the terrorist 007, one of the most wanted terrorists on the internet. I have the Feds and the CIA, both would love to catch me, I have MI6 on my back’. … What makes Irhabi 007’s case so chilling is the evolution from simply setting up websites to becoming involved in terrorism itself … It was Tsouli’s links to a planned attack that brought the police to his door in October 2005 … After Tsouli’s arrest, police spent ﬁve days searching the ﬂat … But it was only when they started to pick apart the ﬁles on Tsouli’s computer that they realised what they had … as the team dug deeper, scouring through two million ﬁles, they realized that there was much, much more … Tsouli was a major player … In December, Tsouli’s sentence was increased from 10 to 16 years. His conviction was the ﬁrst for incitement to commit an act of terrorism through the internet, and a sign of what terrorists are capable of … Peter Clarke, the head of the Metropolitan Police Counter-Terrorism Command, told me: ‘It was the ﬁst virtual conspiracy to murder that we had seen’. The power of the internet is its ability to put like-minded people in touch from every corner of the world. But the beneﬁts for terrorists can also be an advantage for detectives when they catch a suspect, because they can quickly trace the people with whom the suspect was in contact … (Corera G. ‘Al Qaeda’s 007’, The Times, 16 January 2008)

QUESTIONS To what extent would Tsouli be able to act as he did without the new mass media forms he used? Suggest the advantages and disadvantages for the terrorist of using the internet rather than conventional forms of mass media.

CYBER VIOLENCE – CYBER STALKING In a single chapter we can not cover the whole range of cybercrime and the media coverage of it. However, in considering different forms of cyber violence, a brief comment on cyber stalking would be appropriate. Cyber stalking involves the use of the electronic media, particularly the internet but also mobile phones, to pursue and harass other people. Given the ability of the internet to communicate across great distances, cyber stalking will often never manifest itself in the physical sense, although as Williams (2005) puts it, ‘this does not mean that the pursuit is any 172

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less distressing’. The internet allows the stalker to communicate with another person or persons without the usual social constraints of ‘reality’. This can, according to Williams, encourage the stalker, or potential stalker, to become disinhibited, enabling him (usually) to express his desires (however disturbed or bizarre) more easily than in more direct forms of communication. The extent of cyber stalking is difﬁcult to measure accurately. However, it is clear that stalking in general is a widespread offence, The British Crime Survey of 2006 found that 8 per cent of women and 6% of men said that they had been stalked within the previous year; and 20% of all women are stalked at some point during their life. These percentages add up to massively large numbers of people and it is reasonably self-evident that the spread of media technology has enabled stalking to be carried out more easily. Cyber stalking of victims has increased sharply in recent years. Many of the offenders are men who are angry at being rejected by their partners and use the internet to put details of their victim on websites. Examples of this type of cyber stalking were illustrated in an article by Julie Bindel in the Guardian newspaper, entitled ‘the rise of the cyber stalker’: When sexually explicit emails are sent to a victim’s workplace, they risk humiliation and even losing their jobs. Jane Thompson split from her boyfriend of only three weeks, ‘because I felt smothered by him’. One morning soon after, when she arrived at work, a colleague asked her if she had emailed her from home over the weekend. It turned out that her ex-boyfriend had sent Thompson’s colleague ‘a folder with about 10 photos of us both having sex,’ she says, ‘and at that moment I wanted to die’. Thompson’s ex had used a method common to cyber-stalkers – tracing their victim’s email address and sending messages from that address containing offensive, pornographic and even libelous material. (The Guardian, 10 January 2007) The article goes on to look at research into stalking by Lorraine Sheridan of Leicester University, which found that half of all stalking victims are harassed via the internet. Sheridan highlights the growing online support networks which can help cyber stalkers, with so-called ‘revenge’ websites, such as ‘Avengers Den’ and ‘Get Revenge on Your Ex’. It quotes Sheridan saying: I spent an hour surﬁng such sites and what I found was profoundly disturbing. One site advertised itself as being able to assist those wishing to experience ‘the pure, unadulterated satisfaction you get from totally crushing your ex’s self-esteem and annihilating their reputation’. Another offered a service called ‘fake SMS’, where a message can be sent ‘to your ex’ which appears to come from somewhere else. (The Guardian, 10 January 2007) However, because cyber stalkers have to leave a trail of evidence from computers and/or mobile phone, the ‘good news’ is that they are probably more likely to be caught than other, more conventional stalkers; or at least there is ‘hard’ evidence to assist in any convictions of such cyber criminals. 173

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CYBER CRIMINALS Cybercrime is a new form of criminal behaviour and it is unique for a number of reasons. One of the most important features of the internet is its anonymous and borderless nature and indeed it is probably this which attracts the cyber criminal. The popular image of computer criminals, and perhaps especially hackers, is of a lonely disaffected adult or teenage male who has excellent computer skills but is less adept socially. However, although there are examples which ﬁt this stereotype, like most such stereotypes, such a picture does not tell the whole story. It is clear that computer-based crime lacks a structured environment. As Clough and Mougo put it: ‘There is no organized structure in the computer underworld, no mysterious chairman of the board to run things. The underground is anarchic, a confederation of phreakers/hackers and virus writers from all over the world whose common interest transcend culture or language’ (1992, p. 18). However, there are now sub-cultures which have built up around paedophilia and other forms of cybercrime, including terrorism. And because of the nature of the crimes, cyber subcultures are unique – these crimes involve secrecy, invisibility and are typically egalitarian in nature. Although the focus of this study is on the media and crime, we will look brieﬂy at these characteristics of cyber criminal sub-cultures. Secrecy and anonymity Cyber criminal subcultures are based to a large degree on the secrecy of their members. The internet does not require the physical presence of the user and identity is protected by the use of pseudonyms when in communication, a process which Paul Taylor (1999) terms ‘disembodied anonymity’. The anonymity of cyberspace makes identity tracing a signiﬁcant problem and this is an important factor (and attraction) for those engaged in illicit behaviour; so, for example, it is easy for a criminal to create a ﬁctitious identity to perpetuate fraud or child pornography or other offences which can be committed entirely online. The use of ‘handles’ that individuals give to themselves or their group so they can identify themselves, yet keep their ofﬂine identity secret, helps to explain why paedophiles can pretend to be (and get away with it) something completely different to what they are – in terms of age, background and so on. Egalitarian criminality Because of the anonymity of the cyber criminal there does not appear to be a traditional hierarchy based on inequalities of status, wealth and so on – members of cyber subcultures can and do remain faceless. Therefore, physical appearance and social characteristics, such as gender, race, class and wealth do not become a key feature in the organization of subcultures. In ‘normal’ ofﬂine life and face-to-face interaction we are able to gain what social psychologists, such as Erving Goffman (1969), have termed nonverbal clues, intentionally and 174

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unintentionally, based on expressions, nonverbal communications, signals and other social clues. These characteristics are absent when communicating online, which makes judgements and, in turn, feelings of inequality of a different nature to those we might feel during ‘normal’ communication. Any such ‘judgement’ has to occur through the media’s communication of messages rather than social characteristics of the sender. For instance, consider the nonverbal messages that you get when you read an email from someone you have not met face-to-face. Most likely you would answer, none. As with conventional crime, offender proﬁling is becoming increasingly important as regards the cyber criminal. However, it is debatable as to whether a criminal committing crime in cyberspace could be easily ﬁtted into any such proﬁle. It would seem doubtful as we have virtually no information about the individual to work with. However, there is evidence which suggests that distinguishing characteristics do regularly present themselves. In considering cyber obscenity (p. 162) we looked at the work of Wolak and colleagues (2005), which listed the demographic characteristics of people arrested for child pornography offences related to the internet. Here we will consider a study of eighty young hackers in the US by Donn Parker (1998) which found that, although it was difﬁcult to describe the typical cyberdeviant (his term), there where common psychological and behavioural traits that he believed where held by hackers (remembering that hackers are only one type of cybercriminal). These were: • • • • •

precociousness, curiosity and persistence; habitual lying cheating, stealing and exaggeration; juvenile idealism; hyperactivity; drug and alcohol abuse.

Parker argued that these behaviours can manifest themselves in a number of ways, including what he termed differential association and the Robin Hood syndrome. We will look at Parker’s deﬁnition of these two ‘theoretical positions’. Differential association syndrome This is where the individual is so socialized into the computer underworld that he (usually) enjoys the recognition and respect that comes with being able to use the computer for more and more difﬁcult examples of illicit activity – indeed the offender can be motivated to try ever more daring forms of computer-based crime, so as to then be able to show off about it. Most of the cybercriminals I have encountered could not engage in a personto-person crime if their lives depended on it. They could not look victims in the eye and rob them or attack them, but [they] have no problem attacking or robbing a computer because a computer does not look back or exhibit anguish. Cybercriminals often distinguish between the unacceptable practice of doing harm to people and the impersonal acts of doing harm to or through computers. 175

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Yet, many receive a measure of satisfaction in their crimes by personifying the computers they hack, viewing them as adversaries and deriving some enjoyment from ripping them off. (Parker 1998) Robin Hood Syndrome According to Parker, intense personal problems with the individual cyberdeviant are typically the key. In these cases, offenders take on the notion that the victims of cybercrime are often big businesses and organizations that can, in the offender’s mind at least, afford to suffer relatively small losses. As Parker puts it: Despite the common view that greed usually motivates individuals to commit business crime, I have found that most cybercriminals are attempting to solve intense personal problems. At the time that a criminal perpetrates the crime, he is indeed attempting to achieve some type of gain. Law enforcement and the news media usually interpret this as greed or the desire for high living, but my interviews with criminals indicate that intense need, rather than greed, causes them to commit crimes. The problems that they are attempting to resolve run the usual gamut of human difﬁculties: problems with a marriage or love relationship, failure to progress as fast as others in a career path, a need for money to settle outstanding debts … In today’s hacker culture, malicious hackers regularly engage in fabrications, exaggerations, thievery, and fantasy. They delight in presenting themselves to the media … as idealistic do-gooders, champions of the underdog …. Juvenile hackers often fantasize their roles as Clark Kents who become Supermen of cyberspace. Unfortunately, their public persona is far from the truth. Although malicious hackers range in age from preteen to senior citizens, they are characterized by an immature excessively idealistic attitude.

QUESTION BREAK Parker’s research focused on hackers. Look at the different categories of cyber crime provided earlier in the chapter (p. 160). What sort of cyber crimes would be most satisfactorily explained by differential association and which by the Robin Hood syndrome?

Motivations and explanations for cybercriminality – Hirschi and control theory This chapter is not aiming to look at social theories of cybercrime, but rather to focus on the role of the media, and new media technology in particular, in relation 176

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to cybercrime. However, the control theory developed by Trevor Hirschi (1969) does offer an interesting approach to helping us to understand the cybercriminal and will be considered brieﬂy here. The central focus of control theory is that individuals commit criminal and deviant acts when their bond to society is lacking in some way. The classic theoretical approaches (such as Durkheim’s) to explaining crime have emphasized the relationship between the individual and society; with a strong feeling of social solidarity encouraging individuals to conform to society’s rules and regulations. Hirschi, on the other hand, suggest that law-breaking, rather than law-abiding, behaviour is natural and the key issue he addressed was that of why most people choose to follow the laws. Williams (2004) highlights four elements that Hirschi associates with law-abiding people as ‘their attachments with other people; the commitments and responsibilities they develop; their involvement in conventional activity; and their beliefs’. We will elaborate on these elements and try to apply them to cyber criminals. Attachments – with other people and institutions in the community. Strong social and psychological attachments make criminal behaviour less likely as they make individuals more aware of and sensitive to the opinions of other people and to the norms and values of society (Hirschi is aware that strong attachments to criminal groups would have the opposite effect and encourage criminal behaviour). The weaker the attachments the more likely are individuals to engage in cybercrime; and it could be that cybercriminals, and perhaps particularly hackers and online paedophiles, will tend to be less attached to the norms and values of their society. Commitment – the more an individual has ‘invested’ in partners, children, education, occupation, property ownership and so on the less likely will she or he risk losing it through law-breaking behaviour. Individuals who do not consider such commitments important or who have less of them are seen as relatively more free to commit criminal acts. As with attachment, those individuals with less commitment to their wider society are more likely to engage in cybercrime. Involvement – refers to the extent that the individual is involved in a legitimate lifestyle and activity. Crime is less likely if being involved in conventional activities is an important part of the individual’s life. Partly this is because the individual’s involvement with a range of activities leaves them with less time to engage in other activities – and cybercriminals often spend long hours on the internet (for example, cyber thieves and online pornography viewers), which would suggest a lack of involvement in conventional social activities. Beliefs – in this context Hirschi is referring to things an individual chooses to accept, rather than deeply held convictions. As these beliefs can be changed (by the individual accepting different arguments, for instance) they need constant social reinforcement. If individuals have relatively strongly held beliefs in conventional norms and values, they are less likely to engage in the individualistic, anti-social behaviours typical of the cybercriminal. 177

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POLICING CYBERCRIME The focus of this chapter is on the spread of cybercrime as a consequence of the massive technological developments in the mass media of communication in recent years. This development and expansion has led to concerns about how to regulate the mass of information that exists in ‘cyberspace’ and how to police crimes which arise as a result of the new developments. And, while this issue is not of central importance to our general discussion, we will conclude the chapter by commenting brieﬂy on the problems of regulation and policing of cybercrime. At the beginning of the chapter, we highlighted the enormous impact of the internet on a range of human activities, and in considering cybercrime we referred to Wall’s categorization of different types of cybercrime. Wall has become a recognized expert in the study of cybercrime and we will refer here to his discussion of the policing of cyberspace and cybercrime (Wall 1998). He argues that there are four main levels at which policing takes place within cyberspace. First, internet users themselves have formed user groups around speciﬁc issues ‘in order to police web sites that offend them’; for instance, the CyberAngels are a one thousand strong group of net users who are based along the Guardian Angel model and who have a mission statement stating they are dedicated to ﬁghting crime on the internet. Second, the Internet Service Providers who, in spite of the difﬁculties of acting across national boundaries, have a formal, legal status, and who are aware of and fearful of ‘negative publicity which might arise from their not being seen to act responsibly’. Third, State-funded non-public police organizations, which are state agencies that are not normally seen as or called ‘police’. For instance, Germany has a regulatory agency, the Internet Content Task Force, which requires Internet Service Providers to allow security forces to read user’s emails if necessary. Fourth, State-funded public police organizations, who tend to be organized either locally or nationally, depending on which country they are based in; so in the UK the police are mainly organized locally but there are also national police organizations that deal with certain types of crime. The Metropolitan police force, for example, has a specialist computer crime unit. Wall concludes his overview by suggesting that a multi-tiered system of policing is already well established and that it is largely based upon self-regulation by users and by Internet Service Providers. He also points out that it may be that ‘developments in technology will simply eradicate the problem, either by deliberate design, for example, through more secure communications, encryptions and ﬁrewalling, or as a by-product or knock-on effect’. He argues that there is probably no need for a completely new approach to or type of policing and that building on and adapting what is already in place is the most practical way forward. As we have seen when considering cybercrimes, criminals who use the internet and other forms of new media and technology inevitably leave a trail of ‘electronic evidence’ of some kind. As Conway (2006), in discussing terrorists, puts it: ‘Use of the Internet is a double-edged sword for terrorists. They are not the only groups utilizing the Net to forward their goals, which can act as a valuable instrumental power source for anti-terrorist forces also. The more Terrorist groups use the Internet … the more data that is available to trail them’. 178

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So, use of the internet can backﬁre on terrorist groups as it may unwittingly provide information to law enforcement agencies that leads straight to their door; more generally websites can and do provide information for governments’ intelligence agencies, and for the wider spying business. Conway cites MI5 posting an appeal for information about potential terrorists on dissident Arab websites in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in New York. Also, as well as ofﬁcial law enforcement agencies, a number of web-based organizations have been established to monitor terrorist activities. And in the UK, Conway refers to Niall Doyle (author of a book titled Terror Tracker), who claims to have used the Internet to track suspected Islamist militants based in this country. As an example of policing a speciﬁc cybercrime, the ‘crisis’ of internet paedophilia has led to new ways of policing that the particular crime. Jenkins (2001) points out that the development of police powers in the USA include wire tapping and entrapment to aid in the apprehension and charge of internet paedophiles. There is also a television series in America, To Catch a Predator, which is based on a series of hidden camera investigations by the newsmagazine programme Dateline MBC. The central feature is to identify and expose potential child sex abusers who use the internet to contact children. The show engages volunteers from Perverted–Justice (a controversial citizen’s organization which focuses on online predators). These adult volunteers act as decoys who get involved with sexual discussions with men. The men are then told that the decoys are at home alone and encouraged to go to their home for sex. Once the men turn up they are confronted by Chris Hanson, the show’s presenter. During the third series law enforcement also played a part in the show and many ‘potential paedophiles’ were arrested. This does come close to entrapment, which the show has been accused of engaging in, in that it clearly encourages people (particularly men) to break the law and then catches them for doing that.

QUESTION BREAK What are the particular problems associated with policing cybercrime? What factors might make policing such crime easier than policing more conventional crime? Suggest the pros and cons of programmes like To Catch a Predator as a means of policing cybercrime.

FURTHER READING Jewkes Y. (ed.) (2007) Crime Online, Cullompton: Willan Publishing. This edited collection includes accounts and analyzes the key issues within the rapidly developing ﬁeld of cybercrime. 179

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Wall D. S. (ed.) (2001) Crime and the Internet, London: Routledge. Starting with an overview of the general problem of crime and the internet, later chapters explore different types of cybercrime and the problems faced by the criminal justice system in dealing with it. Williams M. (2006) Virtually Criminal: Crime, Deviance and Regulation Online, London: Routledge. This study aims to help us understand the causes of cybercrime through focusing on the role of the internet and online communications in the origins and control of such crime.

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CHAPTER 8 ❚ Public opinion, crime and the media – ‘penal populism’

The Media, Punishment and Public Opinion

❚ Media and (mis)representation of crime and justice ❚ The media and fear of crime

In this ﬁnal and fairly brief chapter, we will look at the relationship between the news media’s representation of crime and justice and the public perceptions of and reaction to these issues. It is well established that public knowledge of crime and justice is largely derived from the media and that the media play a key role in the public’s perception of criminals, victims and those who work within the criminal justice system. And it is widely accepted that the general public have a distorted and exaggerated view of the extent and the nature of crime. For instance, Hough and Roberts (1998) report that data from the British Crime Survey showed that the majority of respondents (78%) felt that at least 30% of crimes involved violence (while ofﬁcial statistics showed the ﬁgure to be only 6%). In discussing sentencing trends in Britain, Hough and Roberts (1999) point out that research on public opinion over the last three decades, and particularly the ﬁndings of the various British Crime Surveys, has consistently shown the public to be critical of those who sentence offenders for being overly lenient. However, they found that, although the public systematically underestimate the severity of sentences passed by the courts, when asked to suggest appropriate sentences for speciﬁc crimes they tended to be more lenient than the current sentencing practices. In terms of sentencing, then, it would seem that there is a discrepancy between what the actual situation is and what the public believes to be happening. Of course, we are making large generalizations here about the public and their response to the news media. In referring to recent British Crime Survey data, Green (2006) found that readers of tabloid newspapers were almost twice as likely as readers of broadsheet or ‘quality’ newspapers to believe that crime had ‘increased a lot’ over recent years – even though there was no statistical evidence of any increase. 181

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PUBLIC OPINION, CRIME AND THE MEDIA – ‘PENAL POPULISM’ In introducing their book, Understanding Public Attitudes to Criminal Justice, Roberts and Hough (2005) start with the statement that ‘Public opinion has always played a signiﬁcant role in the administration of criminal justice, and information about public attitudes is clearly important to politicians and criminal justice professionals’. So it is not surprising that governments spend a good deal of effort conducting surveys and opinion polls and trying to ﬁnd out the public’s attitudes to crime and criminal justice. And, given the arguments and ﬁndings we have put forward in this book, it is fairly clear that public opinions are strongly affected by the media representation of crime, criminals and criminal justice. The attempt by governments to measure the public’s attitude to the criminal justice system, so as to promote greater conﬁdence in it, leads to what has been termed ‘penal populism’ – whereby politicians promote and support policies that they feel will appeal to the public. Roberts and Hough suggest that this concern with public opinion can help explain the emergence of hard line and punitive policies in the criminal justice arena. However, they emphasize that it is important not to be overly critical of this approach, as ‘it is perfectly proper for politicians to ensure that the justice system does not fall totally out of step with public opinion’. As well as the general beneﬁts in terms of social cohesion from the public having faith in the system, criminal justice agencies, such as the police, can gain practical beneﬁts from having the help and support of the wider public. For instance, the police rely on the public for information about crimes and for help in solving them. We have seen throughout our discussion of crime, justice and the media that the public interest in criminal justice is very high, but also that the knowledge the public have of crime and justice is low. Roberts and Hough refer to a survey of Scottish respondents (Hutton 2005) which found that well over half the sample acknowledged that they had little knowledge of the courts or prisons, even though 88% had said they were fairly or very interested in the subject. It is obvious from our own use of the media and our involvement with the wider public on an everyday basis, that most people follow major criminal cases covered in the media and that most people have their own views of the guilt or innocence of people involved in such cases. Indeed, it could be argued that the courts have a higher media proﬁle than other areas of the criminal justice system – court cases are of great interest to the media, particularly with high-proﬁle crimes and/or criminals; witness the massive public interest when celebrities, such as Jeffrey Archer in the UK, or Michael Jackson in the US, are on trial, or over cases involving serial killers, such as Harold Shipman. We have noted the tendency for the media to cover crime and criminal justice issues in a sensationalist style. This promotes a skewed view of the area – certainly studies in various countries show that the public think there is far more crime and that it is rising, even though statistical trends might not support this (Roberts and Hough 2005). And, in considering this discrepancy, Roberts and Hough argue that ‘the consistent pattern of ﬁndings across diverse publics suggests that the source of the public’s perception of ever-rising crime rates is the media … (and) 182

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the public acknowledges the importance of the media as a source of information about crime’. Of course, we all have opinions on things without having detailed knowledge about them and there are lots of areas of criminal justice where the public’s opinions are based on, at best, ﬂimsy evidence. Roberts and Hough (2005) provide an example of this with regard to the Criminal Justice Act of 2003, which allowed for the retrial of a person who had previously been acquitted on that charge. They refer to an opinion poll conducted by The Observer which found that four out of ﬁve respondents supported this change, even though it was highly unlikely they had ever even considered the issue until responding to the survey – in other words, their response could not be seen as based on evidence or on any deep commitment. Similarly, even though the sentencing of criminals in the UK and the US has got tougher in recent years (and more people are sent to prison), there is still a public perception that the system is lenient – ‘public reaction appears to be based on preconception rather than a reasoned evaluation of the evidence’ (Roberts and Hough 2005). The danger of this discrepancy is that governments and politicians court popularity in chasing votes, which encourage them to focus on the popularity of their policies rather than their ability to promote justice or reduce crime.

MEDIA AND (MIS)REPRESENTATION OF CRIME AND JUSTICE Given our reliance on the media for information about crime and criminals and events we have no ﬁrst-hand knowledge or experience of, it is fairly self-evident that the media play a key role in promoting such misunderstandings. For instance, Allen (2001) lists a number of serious public misconceptions about crime and sentencing – people overestimate the amount of violent crime and the proportion of offenders who are juvenile and underestimate the severity of sentencing and the range of alternative sentences available to our courts. He argues that, ‘all too often (the media) paint a picture of crime out of control, a system failing to cope, criminals as evil monsters and alternatives or reforms as doomed to failure’. Given this, he suggests that it is, ‘little wonder … that in headline terms, a harsher criminal justice system is attractive to most people’.

QUESTION BREAK Look at the following extracts of crime reporting from the news media – one from the BBC News and the other from a local newspaper – and then consider the questions below. Child killer’s term ‘too lenient’ The parents of murdered schoolboy Joe Geeling have said his killer’s 12-year jail sentence is ‘too lenient’. Cystic ﬁbrosis sufferer Joe, 11, was hit

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with a frying pan and stabbed before his body was dumped in a park in Bury, Greater Manchester, on 1 March. Michael Hamer, 15, was jailed for life for murder last month, but he will be considered for parole after 12 years. (BBC News, Thursday 9 October 2006, www.bbc.co.uk) Are magistrates in Southport too lenient on crime? A have-a-go hero who chased a burglar from his Hoghton Street business has hit out at the ‘feeble’ punishment dished out. The juvenile, who the Visiter is not allowed to name due to his age, was sentenced at North Sefton Magistrates Court on Tuesday after burgling Tyndall’s restaurant in April. He received a punishment of just 10 hours community service and was told to pay costs of £90. Magistrates heard that the youth and an accomplice kicked down the door of the four-star bistro to steal spirits, champagne and cash. Owner Mark Tyndall, 52, gave chase with on-duty policeman DI Ged Seddon. And at the time, Mr Tyndall exclusively told the Southport Visiter: ‘I just want to see justice done’. But he believes the culprit has got away extremely lightly. He said: ‘This lad has committed burglary, caused £750 damage, and has escaped almost scot-free. The punishment does not ﬁt the crime. Let’s get it right; they were out to burgle. To put it into comparison, the last time I was in court I received a £120 ﬁne for a minor parking offence. It’s one rule for normal society, and one for the down-and-outs’. Blame does not lie at the feet of the police, according to Mr Tyndall, but in the courts. He believes local policemen are themselves becoming agitated with such alleged soft sentencing. (Southport Visiter, 19 October 2007)

QUESTIONS Why do you think there is a strong tendency to believe that sentencing is more lenient than it actually is? Can you suggest any ways by which this misconception might be corrected?

The media coverage of crime, justice and punishment can be very frustrating for those with professional involvement in the areas of crime and justice. There is a tendency for those who work in the criminal justice system, or who have academic and research interests in the area, to criticize and blame the media coverage for presenting an inaccurate, or perhaps to put it more generously, a simplistic picture of crime and criminal justice. Here it is useful to consider the work of Enver Solomon, a journalist who worked for the press and the BBC before joining the Prison Reform Trust. 184

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In looking at the role of the press in encouraging a climate of punitiveness, he starts his discussion by suggesting that journalists are one of the professions (along with estate agents!) that are most disliked and distrusted by the wider public. And he found that this lack of trust and dislike was even more noticeable and virulent among those working in the criminal justice system. People he came across within the criminal justice system tended to see the media as not reporting facts correctly and as being ‘hell bent on whipping up fear with sensationalist reporting’ (Solomon 2005). As well as being sensationalist and misinforming the wider public, the media are criticized for oversimplifying issues and ignoring positive and ground-breaking developments and projects from criminal justice agencies. Of course, the media does not exist in a vacuum and what is presented as news in the media will be inﬂuenced by and reﬂect the agenda of governments and politicians; as Solomon puts it, ‘the balance of power ultimately rests with politicians, who have the levers of state control in their hands, and not with the media’. However, a major reason why the media reporting of crime is sensationalist is simply that the media is big business – newspapers at all levels depend on circulation ﬁgures and proﬁts to survive and editors and journalists believe that sensationalism sells. As well as sensationalism, Solomon points out that it is controversy which also makes news – for instance, a good story might be when a judge or senior public ﬁgure is critical of an aspect of government policy. Furthermore, as a result of the supposed public demand for news, reﬂected in the round the clock dedicated news programmes, there is increased pressure on the news media to ‘churn out stories without having the time or space to sit back and make considered editorial judgements’, which will lead inevitably to oversimpliﬁcation and misrepresentation. Solomon then goes on to consider ways in which the criminal justice system and those working in it should deal with and use the media to support their efforts and initiatives. For instance, criminal justice agencies opening up more information channels would ensure journalists were better informed, as would working in a closer and more supportive relationship with journalists so as to provide them with solid and accurate background information. As he puts it in concluding his argument: If those who work in the criminal justice sector want to use the media to convey their messages more effectively they must begin to understand why it is prone to distort the facts and exaggerate. It is also vital to recognize the social and political environment that the media operates in. Only then will organizations be able to realize the limitations of using the media, that it is naïve to expect newspapers and broadcasters to be responsible conduits of information, and to develop more effective communication strategies (Solomon 2005, p. 35).

QUESTION BREAK Look at the two extracts. The ﬁrst is from The Daily Telegraph’s reporting of a murder case; the second from the Daily Mail, commenting

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on a survey that was carried out for them on public perceptions of the criminal justice system. The murderer who should have been in jail Laila Rezk, 53, was beaten to death by a burglar as she prepared dinner for her family at their home on Kingston Vale … (The murderer) had been in prison but was released two months early. Of course, he was not going to be in jail for ever … (but) had he not been freed early, he would not have been where he was on November 29 last year – carrying out an opportunistic burglary after a day’s drinking. We can be virtually certain of this: Edwards would not have killed Mrs Rezk if he had been kept behind bars for the duration of his sentence. (Johnston P., The Daily Telegraph, 3 December 2007) The judiciary is out of touch with the public, says poll Deep public unhappiness with a judiciary which is out of touch with the lives of ordinary people and places the interests of convicts and terror suspects ﬁrst is revealed in a Daily Mail poll today. The ICM survey also found that three out of four Britons say the sentences given to criminals are too lenient … The poll suggests a lack of public trust in the judiciary. Most strikingly, only 18 per cent have faith that the sentences they want passed against criminals will be imposed by the courts. Only 36 per cent said judges could be trusted to put the interests of ordinary people ﬁrst, compared with those of minority groups. The lack of trust stems from a belief judges have no understanding of mainstream public attitudes … The survey of 1,019 men and women for the Daily Mail, which was carried out last week … (found that) seventy-ﬁve per cent said sentences were ‘too lenient’. Only 3 per cent said punishments were ‘too harsh’, while 18 per cent considered them about right. (Slack J., Daily Mail, 8 March 2007)

QUESTIONS Find some recent newspaper articles on crimes and sentencing. Can you ﬁnd any evidence of criminal justice practitioners (e.g. police ofﬁcers, probation ofﬁcers, youth justice workers, judges) being criticized for how they dealt with those crimes and/or criminals?

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It has been well established throughout this book that the news media are very preoccupied with stories and issues around crime, justice and punishment. Also, that the amount of coverage and the range of different crimes and issues reported on is massive. In reﬂecting on the populist representations of crime and disorder in the media, Sparks (2001) points out that this vast, seemingly insatiable interest can be a source of puzzlement for those researching and/or working in the criminal justice ﬁeld. He comments: Why this endless concentration on the bad news about crime? … Why are errors, failings and scandals so much more newsworthy than successes and dogged hard work? Must every progressive initiative be undermined by unsympathetic news coverage or every challenging research ﬁnding reduced to sound bites? (p. 6) As we mentioned earlier, the news media does not just exist independently, but both reﬂects and is inﬂuenced by political practices and processes. Sparks refers to the work of Ericson and colleagues (1991) and their argument that it is the general concern with the question of order in society which helps to explain the media’s appetite for crime news, and why so much attention is given to ‘what is out of place: the deviant, equivocal and unpredictable’. Sparks also suggests that a preoccupation with blame is another key feature of the news media discourse. This blame can be attached to offenders themselves but also to people in criminal justice contexts not doing their job properly, illustrated by comments such as ‘over-stretched’ police forces or ‘inexperienced’ social workers. While this might seem to present a rather discouraging picture, Sparks does point out that the media interest in blame can also at times have a positive effect by calling those with positions of power and authority to account.

THE MEDIA AND FEAR OF CRIME Another aspect of the media’s inﬂuence on public opinion is with regard to fear of crime, in particular whether media coverage of crime, and its sensationalist reporting of crime, creates fear among the general public. Newburn (2007) makes the point that fear of crime has become a widely discussed and important notion within criminology. However, it was not until the 1960s and 1970s that criminologists and others started to talk about ‘fear of crime’. He suggests that this relatively recent academic interest came about as a result of the development of victim surveys as a way of trying to measure the actual amount of crime (rather than the amount of crime known about by the authorities – the ofﬁcial crime statistics). Finding out about people’s fear of crime has always been a part of victimization surveys, such as the British Crime Surveys; indeed Newburn refers to the early British Crime Surveys (which started in 1984) as asking questions about how safe people felt ‘being out alone after dark’.

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QUESTION BREAK Newburn (2007) cites a question asked by the British Crime Survey: How safe do you feel walking alone in this area after dark? • • • •

very safe fairly safe a bit unsafe very unsafe

What problems can you suggest with this question as a way of ﬁnding out about crime and fear of crime?

Fear of crime is a broad notion and it should perhaps be distinguished from worry and concern about crime – for instance, there is a clear distinction between the personal fear of being a crime victim to a more general concern about levels of crime in particular areas. More recent British Crime Surveys have asked about ‘worry of crime’ and have found that there are high levels of worry about certain crimes, such as burglary and rape. Also, that these worries differed with different groups of the population, with women, for instance, expressing far greater worry over violent crime and burglary than men, but not over car crime. Although fear of crime has become an important area of criminological consideration, Jewkes (2004) points out that some of the early theorizing in this area came from left wing, critical criminologists who tended to argue that the powerful in society used crime as a means of social control – crime was viewed by some left-wing theorists as ‘an ideological construct; it protects the powerful and further marginalizes the powerless’. Jewkes argues that this sort of theoretical approach assumes that fear of crime is irrational and unreasonable, and is a sort of false consciousness produced by those in authority. However, this view has been attacked by realist approaches in criminology, which argue that the images of crime portrayed in the media and elsewhere are not illusions and that the media coverage of crime reﬂects what people already know – that, while it may be exaggerated, crime does occur and can be devastating for victims of it. Indeed, a good deal of crime, especially hidden crime such as domestic violence, is not prevalent in the news media or in crime statistics – yet, as Jewkes points out, the British Crime Survey of 2000 ﬁnding that over a third of women do not go out alone at night ‘is not that surprising and cannot be explained away as an irrational response’. In terms of relationship between fear of crime and the media, a central question is whether people fear crime because so much crime is presented in the media or does the media provide such massive coverage of crime because people fear crime and like to see what is happening? The idea that the media have created unwanted levels of fear of crime is by no means new and it is fair to say that if there is a link then the explosion in the forms and extent of media in recent years will have exacerbated these fears of crime. 188

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In considering the extent to which the media affects levels of fear of crime, Newburn (2007) refers to the work of Gerbner and colleagues in the US, who found that ‘heavy’ users of television (more than four hours a day) exhibited higher levels of fear of crime. He also highlights a study by Schlesinger and Tumbler (1992) in the UK which found that readers of tabloid newspapers and heavy watchers of television were more likely to be worried about becoming a victim of crime, particularly being assaulted. However, the link between use of the media and fear of crime cannot be assumed, as Newburn puts it ‘it is, for example, perfectly possible that people who are especially fearful are attracted to particular types of media’. Of course, the media will clearly have an effect on people’s attitudes and views, including their fears; what is debatable is how these effects work. So the relationship between fear and the media is clearly a subtle one. It is apparent, though, that the public view of the extent of crime is strongly inﬂuenced by the picture painted by much of the news media – that the crime rate is spiralling and the criminal justice system is too lenient (as the extracts in the Question breaks on pages 182–3 and 184–5 above indicate). One response to the fear of crime is the regular demand by the wider public for more community policing, in particular for more ‘bobbies on the beat’. Jewkes (2004) makes the point that this demand is unﬂagging even though there is no research evidence that more police on the beat will reduce crime. She suggests that the desire for bobbies on the beat is linked to fears of ‘others’, such as immigrants, youth gangs, travellers and so on. It may also reﬂect a lack of public conﬁdence in the police and a feeling that increased bureaucratization in the police, and an emphasis on efﬁciency at all costs, has pulled the police away from local, community policing which, as Jewkes says, is seen as inefﬁcient in hard economic terms. In concluding his discussion of the relationship between the media and public attitudes to crime and criminals, Allen (2001) argues that there would be a number of positive outcomes from more informed and objective media reporting of crime; in particular it would lead to a more informed and aware public, as the following comment suggests: While eight out of ten people say they think sentencing is too lenient, when confronted with real cases, public sentencing preferences are, if anything, more lenient than sentencing guidelines. It is clear that the public is not nearly so proprison as reports in the media would sometimes suggest. Polls have consistently shown that more people disagree than agree with the notion that ‘prison works: the more prisons the better’. (Allen 2001, p. 41)

FURTHER READING Allen R. (2001) ‘Informing the Public’, Criminal Justice Matters, 43:40–41. This article considers how the media can help to correct public misconceptions about crime. Roberts J. V. and Hough M. (2005) Understanding Public Attitudes to Criminal Justice, Milton Keynes: Open University Press. This book looks at public attitudes 189

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to criminal justice and the role of the media in informing these attitudes; it considers, in particular, the lack of conﬁdence the public has in criminal justice processes. Solomon E. (2005) ‘Is the Press the Real Power Behind Punitivism?’, Criminal Justice Matters, 59:34–35. Starting with a consideration of why there seems to be an endless concentration on bad news and sensationalist reporting in the media representation of crime, Solomon suggests that change of approach is needed.

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196

INDEX

A Hard Day’s Night 7 A Touch of Evil 135 ABC News Network 76 Adams, G. 108–9 adverts 36 Ahsan, S.T. 168 Ainley, P. 59 Aktenzeichen XY 139 Alderton, A. 108–9 Allen, R. 183, 189 Althusser, L. 104 Americanization of popular culture 25 Andrews, T. 80, 131 angel/demon dichotomy 122 al-Ansar 171 Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) 71 Applewhite, M. 156–7 Archer, J. 99, 182 Asmar, C.A. 88 Association of Chief Police Ofﬁcers 115 Association of Chief Probation Ofﬁcers 64 asylum seekers 88–9, 113–17 Back, L. 167 Bad Girls 151 Baden-Powell, R. 8 Bandura, A. 104; bobo doll study 19, 24, 26 Banks, M. 95 Baranek, P. 78 Barings Bank 98 Barker, R. 151 Barkham, P. 59, 60 Barlow 136 Barlow at Large 136 Barnardos 165

Baron, R.A. 19 Barrow, B. 87 Basic Instinct 84 battered women syndrome 82 Batty, D. 155 Bayswater Brothers 52 BBC 3, 31 BBC News 24 124 News Online 43, 63, 72, 105, 118, 184 Beatles, the 7 Beckinsale, R. 151 behaviourist approach 21–2; biological interpretation of 77; hypodermic syringe model 15–20, 21–2, 24, 34 Ben-Yehuda, N. 47–8, 66 Benedict, H. 78, 82–3 Bennett, J. 166 Bernado, P. 79–80 Beshenivsky, P. 88–9 Beshenivsky, S. 88 Big Heat, The 135 Bill, The 138 Bindel, J. 109, 173 Binks, G. 79–80 Bird, R. 74 Birmingham Six 112 Blachford, C. 80 Black, C. 97 Blackadder 152 Blair, I. 113 Blair, T. 58, 87, 157 blaming 82, 102, 187 Blue Lamp, The 135 Bluewater shopping centre 57–9 Boateng, P. 64 197

INDEX

bobo doll study 19, 24, 26 Boehm, C. 99 Borstals 71 British Crime Survey 113, 173, 181, 187–8 British National Party 160, 166 British villains: top 10 99 Brown, J. 92 Brown, S. 73 BSkyB 29 Bucknill, Justice 141 Building Blocks for Youth 86 Bulger, J. 21, 23, 71, 73, 125 Bullit 135 Burgess, E. 91 burglary rates 92 Buried 151 Burnett, V. 62 Butler, T. 63, 64 Cameron, D. 58, 78 Caplan, J. 142 Caplan Report 142 Capone, A. 90 Carr, M. 117–23, 149 Carroll, S. 118, 121, 122 Castells, M.: The Information Age: The Rise of the Network Society 158–9 Catliff, N. 142 Cavanagh, A. 65 CCTV 71, 123, 125; shortcomings 126–7 Chan, J. 78 Chaney, D. 2–3 Chapman, J. 95, 117 chavs 57, 59 Chelmsford Chronicle, The 2 Chicago 90 Chicago school 91 child abductions 37 child abuse 10; see also paedophilia child murders 105–6 child pornography 155 child welfare 71 children 106 Children Act 1908 71 Children and Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act 1959 21 Children and Young Persons Act 1969 71 Child’s Play 3 23 198

Chinatown 135 Chomsky, N. 30 cinema 16–17; representation of prisons 150–1 Clarke, C. 88 Clarke, E. 56 Clarke, P. 172 Clement, D. 151 Climbie, V. 105 Clough, B. 174 Cohen, S. 4–5, 7; folk devils 41–5, 48–50; Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers 40–1, 50; Images of Deviance 45; Jewkes’ critique of 48–50; moral panics 10, 41–5, 48–50 Coleman, L. 24 Coll, S. 168–9 Collins, D.R. 74 Columbine High School 24 Combat 18 166 Condon, P. 85 consensus perspectives 32–6 controlling ideology 30–1 conventional victimology see positivist victimology Conway, M. 170–1, 178–9 Cool Hand Luke 151 copycat syndrome 22–5 Corera, G. 171–2 corporate crime 97 Council of Europe: Convention on Cybercrime Treaty 2001 159 council tax arrears 74–5 courts 140–5; media proﬁle 182; soft sentencing 183–6, 189; television in 141–5 Cowan, R. 163–4 Coyle, A. 148 Crain, C. 5 Creaton, H. 3 crime: fear of 187–9; history of 5–6, 7–8, 21 Crimewatch UK 82, 131, 139–40 criminal behaviour: causes of 68 criminal communities 89–96; burglary rates 92; Chicago 90; cities 90–3; Hull 93; Liverpool 92; rural areas 94–5; and sense of place 95; urban areas 90–3 Criminal Justice Act 1925 141 Criminal Justice Act 1991 85

INDEX

Criminal Justice Act 2003 183 criminal justice system 103, 128–9 criminology: origins 90 Critcher, C. 41, 42, 47, 48, 61 critical/Marxist perspectives 27–8, 29–31, 50, 73 critical victimology 103–4 Crosbie, J.: Peterhead Porridge 148 Crutchﬁeld, R.D. 90, 91 cultural criminology 38–9 cultural effects theory 25 culture: Americanization of 25; globalization of 25 culture as crime 38 Curran, J. 2–3 Curtis, L.P.: Jack the Ripper and the London Press 3–4 Cushing, P. 99 cyber criminals: anonymity 174; differential association syndrome 175–6; egalitarian criminality 174–5; Robin Hood syndrome 175–6; secrecy 174 cyber obscenity 160, 175 cyber racism 167 cyber stalking 172–3 cyber theft 161 cyber trespass 160 cyber violence 160; cyber stalking 172–3; hate speech 166–8; terrorism 168–72, 178–9 CyberAngels 178 cybercrime 154–79; control theory 177; cyber criminals 174–7; cyber obscenity 160, 175; cyber racism 167; cyber stalking 172–3; cyber terrorism 168–72, 178–9; cyber theft 161; cyber trespass 160; cyber violence 160, 172–9; deﬁnition of 159–60; differential association syndrome 175–6; egalitarian criminality 174–5; hacker culture 176; hate speech 166–8; policing 178–9; Robin Hood syndrome 175–6 Cybercrime Act 2007 159 Dahl, R. 34 Daily Express 6, 60, 87, 88, 111–12, 115, 117, 149 Daily Mail 61, 71, 89, 109, 114–15, 123, 186 Daily Mirror 7, 8–10, 62, 82, 100, 118, 121, 141 Daily Record 116 Daily Star 80, 111, 114, 149 Daily Telegraph 6, 71, 75, 82, 87, 119, 162, 186

Dando, Jill 125, 139 Dando, Judith 126 Darling, A. 29 Dateline MBC 179 Davies, D. 75–6 Davies, F. 75–6 demonstrations 132–3 deviance ampliﬁcation 45–7, 48, 49 deviant/delinquent behaviour 44–5, 49 Dickens, C. 146–7, 151; American Notes 146 Dickens, J. 147 Die Hard 135 differential association syndrome 175–6 Dirty Harry 135 discourse 78 Dixon of Dock Green 134, 135–6 Donovan, P. 112 Dorfman, L. 1, 86 Doyle, N.: Terror Tracker 179 drug trafﬁckers 75–6 drug use/users: marijuana 46–7; and moral panic 45–7; and the police 45–6 drugs offences 9 Drury, K. 137 Durkheim, E. 20, 32, 49, 91, 177 Dutroux, M. 61 Edinburgh Sheriff Court 142 egalitarian criminality 174–5 elderly offenders 73–6 elite-engineered’ model 48 Ellis, H. 83 Emsley, C. 134 End Child Prostitution, Pornography and Trafﬁcking (Ecpat) 63 Endsleigh 92 entertainment 37 Epoch Times, The 86, 87 Ericson, R. 78, 187 ethnic minorities 50, 113 ethnicity 84–9 Evening News 7 Experiment, The 151 Eysenck, H.J. 20; Sex, Violence and the Media (with Nias) 22–3 Facebook 156 Fagge, N. 88

199

INDEX

Falconer, Lord 145 Fatal Attraction 84 Feltham Sings 151 feminist theorists 105 Ferrell, J. 38 First Blood 24 ﬂogging 53 folk devils 47, 73; hoodies as 59; and moral panics 41–5, 48–50; paedophiles as 65 Foucault, M. 2; Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison 124, 145–6 Fraser, E. 78 fraud 9, 98; card fraud on internet 155; identity fraud 155 Frigon, S. 78 Fuller, M. 88 functionalist perspective 32–3 Gans, H. 34 Garlick 155 Garotters’ Act 1863 52–3 garotting 8, 51–4; letters to The Times on 51–2 Garside, R. 59 Gauntlett, D. 25–7 Gazley, D. 64 Geeling, J. 183–4 gender 76–7, 107, 119; intimate partner killing 81–2; male gaze 78–9; see also women General Council of the Bar: Public Affairs Committee 142 Gentle Touch, The 138 Gerbner, G. 189 Gibbs, B. 149 Giddens, A. 104 Gill, M. 124 Glamour 83 Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees 116 Glasgow Media University Group 31–2 Glasser, S.B. 168–9 Global Criminal Economy 159 Global Jihad Movement (GJM) 169 globalization of popular culture 25 Goffman, E. 174 Going Straight 151 Goode, E. 47–8, 66 Governor, The 151 Graham, C. 94 Gramsci, A. 30 200

Green, D.A. 181 Greenhill, S. 89 Gregori, J. 158 Guardian, The 12, 58, 59, 64, 71, 97, 109, 113, 132, 141, 150, 163–4, 173 Guildford Four 112 Gull, S. 12 Gunter, B.: Media and Body Image (with Wykes) 79 Guterres, A.: ‘Refugees: Victims of Intolerance’ 113–14 hacker culture 176 Hagell, A. 26 Hall, S. et al. 73; Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order, 50 Hamed, N. 99 Hamer, M. 184 Hand that Rocks the Cradle, The 84 Hanson, C. 179 Haralambos, M. 34 Hardy, S. 74 Harrington, R. 58 Harris, C. 64 Hart, L. 83 hate speech 166–8 Heartbeat 138 Heaven’s Gate cult 156–7 hegemony 30 Hell’s Angels 7 heteropatriarchy 83 Hill, A. 164–6 Hillsborough Stadium 126 Hindley, M. 81, 117 hippies 42 Hirschi, T. 177 Hobson, J. 108 Holborn, M. 34 Holliday, G. 125 Holmes, E. 121 Home Ofﬁce Report: Criminal Justice: The Way Ahead 128–9; internet 161 Homolka, K. 79–80 homosexuality 83 hoodies 57–60 Hopkins, M. 55, 56–7 Hough, M. 181; Understanding Public Attitudes to Criminal Justice (with Roberts) 182–3

INDEX

Howard, J. 52–3 Hughes, R. 94 Hull 93 Hull Daily Mail, The 93 human rights 102, 103 Hungerford massacre 24 Huntley, I. 117, 149 Hutton, N. 182 Hyland, J. 62 hypodermic syringe model 15–20, 21–2, 24, 34; and the behaviourist approach 21 identity fraud 155 Identity Theft Act 2007 159 Immigration Service 115 Independent, The 23, 64, 82, 92, 94, 118 industrial disputes 32 Innes, M. 10, 130–1 Innocent 112–13 insurance companies 92 International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia 142 International Herald Tribune 98 internet 111, 112; banking 156; card fraud 155; child pornography 155; Far Right wing sites 166–8, 169; and the Heaven’s gate cult 156–7; identity fraud 155; Jihadi sites 169; millennium bug 157–8; Network Society 159; paedophilia 65–6, 155, 161–6, 179; proliferation of 155–8; sex offences 155; shopping 156; see also cyber crime Internet Content Task Force 178 Internet Service Providers 178 Internet watch Foundation 165 intimate partner killing 81–2 Irhabi 007 171–2 Jack the Ripper 3–4 Jackson, M. 182 Jailbirds 151 Jama, M. 88 Jama, Y.A. 88 James, E. 73, 151 James, S. 116–17 Janowski, K. 116 Jenkins, P. 179 Jewett, H. 4–5

Jewkes, Y. 17, 20, 23, 25, 30, 34, 36, 37, 41; Bulger case 71; children 106; Crimewatch UK 139–40; critique of Cohen 48–50; fear of crime 188; Media and Crime 123; policing 189; television representation of policing 134; television representation of prisons 151, 152 Johnson, B. 92 Johnston, D. 12 Johnston, H. 146 Johnston, P. 87, 186 Jones, N. 34 Jones, R. 60 Jones, S. 87 Jordison, S.: Crap Towns (with Kieran) 92–4 journalists: and police 131 joyriding 71, 73 Juliet Bravo 138 justice: miscarriage of 112–13; open justice 141–4 juvenile justice system 71, 111 Kanka, M. 111 Katz, E. 16, 34 Kerviel, J. 98 Kieran, D.: Crap Towns (with Jordison) 92–4 King, R. 125 Kisko, S. 112 Klute 135 Knight, T. 149 Knowles, J. 121–2 Ku Klux Klan 160, 166 Kubrin, C.E. 90, 91 La Frenais, I. 151 labelling 42 Laville, S. 12 Lawrence, S. 132 Lazarsfeld, P. 16, 34 Lee, C. 99 Leeson, N. 98–9; Back from the Brink: Coping with Stress 98 legal system 140–5 Leishman, F. 129, 131, 133, 134, 135, 137, 138, 140 lesbianism 83, 84 Lethal Weapon 135 Levenson, J. 129, 147–8 Lewis, D. 147 Liebert, R.M. 19 201

INDEX

Life: Living with Murder 151 Littlejohn, R. 109, 116–17 Liverpool 92 Liverpool Echo 149 Lloyds Weekly 4 Low, F. 76 MacDonald, J. 109 Machray, A. 92 Macpherson Report 132 Macrae, C. 111 Mail on Sunday 115, 144 male gaze 78–9 marijuana 46–7 Mark, R. 130, 136–7 market/liberal theories 33, 35 Mason, P. 128, 129, 131, 133, 134, 135, 137, 138, 140, 142, 147, 150 mass society 20–1 Mastercard 165 Matharu, B. 113 Matrix, The 24 Mawby, R. 104, 131–2, 133, 135 McCahill, M. 123 McCann, G. 111–12 McCann, K. 111–12 McCann, M. 111–12 McCann, W. 109 McDiarmid, I. 99 McDowell, M. 99 McKay, H.D. 91 McKellan, I. 99 McLean, R. 82 McRobbie, A. 58 McVicar 150 McWhirter, A. 12 media effects model: and copycat syndrome 22–5; critique of 25–7; cultural effects theory 25; hypodermic syringe model 15–20, 21–2, 24, 34; and mass society 20–1 ‘Megan’s Law’ 111 Mendelsohn, B. 102–2, 103 Menendez Brothers 144 Metropolitan Police Force 178; Counter Terrorism Squad 172 Midnight Express 150 Midsomer Murders 94 Miers, D. 102 202

Miliband, R.: The State in Capitalist Society 30–1 millennium bug 157–8 Ministry of Justice 149 (mis)representation of crime and justice 183–7 modernity 37–8 Mods and Rockers 7, 41–5, 49 Monster 84 moral boundaries 48, 49 moral crusades: deﬁnition of 47 moral panic 10, 21, 40, 66; deﬁnition of 41; and drug use 45–7; ﬂaws in theory 49–50; and folk devils 41–5, 48–50; garotting 8, 51–4; Goode and Ben-Yehuda on 47–8; and paedophilia 65; youth as target of 48, 49 Morgan, R. 59 Morse 138 mugging 50, 85 Mulley, K. 110 Mulvey, L. 78–9 Mungo, P. 174 murder 117–23; child murders 105–6; intimate partner killing 81–2 Murdoch, R. 28–9, 61 Myspace 156 Narey, M. 147 National Alliance 166 National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders (NACRO) 64 National Center for Victims of Crime (NCVC) 109, 110 National Crime Squad: Paedophile Online Investigation Team 166 Naylor, B. 78 Nelken, D. 98 Network Society 159 New Scientist 15 New Statesman, The 112 New York Times 17–19 Newburn, T. 21, 26, 40, 41, 70, 71, 97, 187–8, 189 News of the World 61–4, 111, 115 news reporting 31–2, 34 newspapers see press Nias, D.K.B. 20; Sex, Violence and the Media (with Eysenck) 22–3 Nicol, T. 108–9 Nisbet, R. 2

INDEX

Norris, C. 123 Norwich prison 150 Observer, The 24, 97, 164–6, 183 offender proﬁling 175 offenders: ages of 9; elderly 73–6; young 70–3 O’Hagan, A. 75 Olivier, L. 99 Only Fools and Horses 152 open justice 141–4 opinion leaders 16 Orr, D. 118 Orwell, G.: Nineteen Eighty Four 124–5 O’Sullivan, S. 152 Overkill: The Aileen Wournos Story 84 Oxfam 115 Oxford Handbook of Criminology 14–15 Oz 151 paedophiles: as folk devils 65 paedophilia 61–6; internet 65–6, 155, 161–6, 179; and moral panic 65 Palmer, T.: child abuse 165 Papillon 151 Park, R. 91 Parker, D. 175–6 Paulsgrove riot 62 Pavlac, B.A. 55 Payne Fund 16–17 Payne, S. 61, 111 Pearson, G. 49; historical study of crime 5–6, 7–8, 21; youth crime 73 Peel, R. 134 penal popularism 182–3 penny dreadfuls 21 Pentonville jail 149 People, The 46, 144 Perverted-Justice 179 Phillips, F. 121, 122 phishing 155 Piggot, L. 100 pluralism 33–6 police 130–40; corruption 136–7; and cybercrime 178–9; and demonstrations 132–3; and drug users 45–6; investigation strategy 130–1; and journalists 131; origins and development 133–4; relations with public 137; television representation 38, 133, 134–9

Police Review 126 Porridge 147, 151–2 Porter, S. 100 positivist approaches 22 positivist victimology 102, 103, 105, 107 postmodern criminology 36–8 power: in society 33–4 premenstrual syndrome (PMS) 77 Prescott, J. 58 press: freedom of 2–3; instrument of social control 3; and Jack the Ripper; newspaper ownership 28–9 Pressurewise Trust 89 Prime Suspect 138 Prison Reform Trust 74, 122 Prison Weekly 151 Prisoner 151 prisons 145–52, 189; cinematic representation 150–1; as dangerous places 150; as holiday camps 148–9; Prison Inspectorate 74; prison populations 74, 85, 122; separate systems 147; television representation 147 Private Eye 123 property crime 9 prostitution 83, 84, 107–9 public opinion 181; penal popularism 182–3; prisons 148–9 Punch 51, 52, 53 al-Qaeda 168–9, 170, 171–2 Quinney, R. 103 R. v Craddock 77 R. v Smith 77 radical victimology 103 radio 3 Ratboy 71 Rathbone, B. 99 Reade, B. 100 Real Bad Girls 151 Refugee Action 115 Refugee Council 115 Reiner, R. 14–15, 131–3, 138; Oxford Handbook of Criminology 130 Reiner, R. et al. 8–10 Ressler, R. 83 Rezk, L. 186 Rhys Price, T. a 113 203

INDEX

Rickman, A. 99 Ringland, A. 163–4 Robbins, P. 165 Roberts, J.V. 181; Understanding Public Attitudes to Criminal Justice (with Hough) 182–3 Robin Hood syndrome 175–6 Robinson, A. 92 Rocky ﬁlms 57; First Blood 24 rogue traders 98 Rooney, J. 75 Ross, N. 139 Rough Justice 112 Runnymede Trust: ‘A Tale of Two Englands’ 85–6 Ryan, M. 24 Sampson, R.: ‘Old Inside’ 74 ‘Sarah’s Law’ 64, 111 Schlesinger, P. 189 Schwartz, T. 158 Scotland: television in courts 142 Scream 24 Scum 150 Seamark, M. 89 Seaton, J. 3 secondary victimization 109–10 secondary victims 117–23 Seddon, F. 141 Seddon, G. 184 sensationalist reporting 37, 182–3, 185 sense of place 95 serial killings 37 sex offences 9; internet 155 sex offenders 111 Sex Offenders Act 1997 61, 63 sexuality and women 82–3 Shaw, C.S. 91 Sheridan, L. 173 Shipman, H. 141, 182 signal crimes 10 Simpson, O.J. 143–4 Sims, P. 89 Single White female 84 Skinheads 41, 42 Slack, J. 186 Smith, C. 64 Smith, J. 88 social class 96–100 social context of crime 68–9 204

social learning theory 104 social order: maintenance of 32 social problems: deﬁnition of 47 Social Trends 73 Societe Generale 98 society: power in 33–4 sociological theorizing: critical/Marxist perspectives 27–8, 29–31, 50 soft sentencing 183–6, 189 Softly, Softly 136 Soham 95; see also Huntley, I Soldier of Fortune 24 Solomon, E. 184–5 Southport Visitor 184 Sparks, R. 187 Spriggs, A. 124 Stallone, S. 57 Starr, Ringo 7 state, role of 103, 104 Stephens, T. 12 Stepniak, D. 141, 142 Steptoe and Son 152 stereotyping 46, 55, 76, 84, 119 Stormfront 166 Strangeways 147, 151 street crime, history of 5–6, 7–8, 21 Strinati, D. 36–7 subcultural style 38 subcultures, youth 7 Suffolk Ripper see Wright, S. Sullivan, M. 11 Sun, The 11, 64, 80, 88, 89, 108, 116–17, 119, 148 Sunday Mirror 157 Sunday Times 108 surveillance 123–5; CCTV 71, 123, 125, 126–7 Sutcliffe, P. 4, 11, 108, 109, 123 Sutcliffe, S. 123 Sutherland, E. 97 Sweeney, The 134–5, 135–6, 137, 138 Tanner, J. 82 Taylor, A. 88 Taylor, P. 100, 174 Teddy Boys 7, 41 Televising the Courts 142 television 14–15, 19–20; in courts 141–5; police programmes 133, 134–9; police reality

INDEX

programmes 38, 133, 139–40; schedules 35; UK Parliament 144 Tendler, S. 87 terrorism: and the internet 168–72, 178–9; terrorist attacks 37 Terry-Thomas 99 Thatcher, M. 100 Thin Blue Line 134 This Morning 111 Thompson, R. 71 Thompson, W. 62 Thornton, S. 82 Times, The 7, 8–10, 51–2, 87, 111, 134, 171–2 Tirrell, A. 5 To Catch a Predator 179 Tocqueville, A. de: Democracy in America 34 Tombs, S. 97 Tonnies, F. 20, 91 Total Film 56 TowerGroup 156 Trevor-Roper, H. 54–5 Trial and Error 112 Trial of Hon. Daniel Sickles 5 trial pamphlets 5 Trial, The 142 Troop, J. 11 Tsouli, Y. 171–2 Tuchman, G. 77 Tumbler, H. 189 Tyndall, M. 184 UK Parliament: television broadcasting of 144 United Nations High Commission for Human Rights 113, 116 University of Chicago 91 Upton, J. 123 US Department of Justice 73 Venables, J. 71 victimology 101–3; critical victimology 103–4; positivist victimology 102, 103, 105, 107; radical victimology 103; secondary victimization 109–10; structuration 104; unconventional victims 102; victim precipitation 102, 107; victim proneness 102

victims of crime 70; asylum seekers 88–9, 113–17; blaming 82, 102, 187; deserving 104–10; ethnic minorities 50, 113; positive inﬂuence of media 110–13; secondary victimization 109–10; secondary victims 117–23; social construction 104; unconventional victims 102; undeserving 104–10; victim precipitation 102, 107; victim proneness 102; women 106–9 Virgo, W. 137 Visa 165 Von Hentig, H. 102–2; The Criminal and his Victim 102 Wade, R. 64 Wadeson, C. and W. 60 Walklate, S. 104 Wall, D.S. 159–61, 178 Ward, J. 112 Wardle, C. 105–6 Washington Post 79, 168–9 Watson, J.B. 21–2 Weber, D. 76, 91 Webster, D. 24 Weimann, G.: Terror in the Internet 169–70 Welles, O. 17–19 Wells, H. 95, 117 Wells, H. G.: The War of the Worlds 17–19 Wertham, F. 101 West, F. 80 West, R. 80–1 white-collar crime 97, 98 Whiting, R.W. 111 Whyte, D. 97 Wilding, L. 163 Williams, A. 62 Williams, K.S. 177 Williams, M. 172–3 Wilson, D. 152 witch-craze, Europe 54–7 Within these Walls 151 Wolak, J. et al. 175; Child Pornography Possessors Arrested in Internet-Related Crimes 162 women: battered women syndrome 82; biological interpretation of behaviour 77; ﬁctional representations 84; intimate partner killing 81–2; lesbianism 83, 84; the male gaze 78–9; physical appearance 79; 205

INDEX

prostitution 83, 84, 107–9; and sexuality 82–3; victims of crime 106–9; witch-craze 54–7 Woodward, L. 143 Woolman, A. 88 World Socialist Web 116–17 Wournos, A. 83, 84 Wright, S. 4, 11–12, 108 www.actnow.com.ac 72 www.azzam.com 169 www.ezinearticles.com 92 www.ﬁndmadeliene.com 111 www.the59club.com 44 www.thefword.org.uk 121–2 Wykes, M.: Media and Body Image (with Gunter) 79

206

Y2K 157–8 Yates, N. 119–20 Yildiz, F. 116 Yorkshire Ripper see Sutcliffe, P. Young, J.: The Role of the Police as Ampliﬁers of Deviance 45–7 Young Offenders Act 1854 71 youth 70–3; as target of moral panic 48, 49 youth crime 7–8 Youth Offending Teams 71 youth subcultures 40, 48, 49; see also Mods and Rockers Z Cars 136 Zamorra, R. 22–3